Grounds for Divorce

The steelworkers' President Phil Murray was busy at the negotiating table, but C.I.O. President Phil Murray had other troubles on his mind. For months Murray had been threatening stern measures against rebellious unions like the Communist-wired United Electrical Workers. Last week U.E., the C.I.O.'s biggest left-wing union, beat the C.I.O. chief to the punch. At its stormy 14th annual convention in Cleveland, the U.E.'s leadership made all but the final motions of breaking off from C.I.O. and forming a third association of U.S. labor unions, which would be Communist-controlled.

Do or Die. As he had done at the last seven U.E. conventions, the C.I.O.'s slim little Secretary-Treasurer James B. Carey moved into the convention hall with a slate of right-wing candidates and a do-or-die campaign to unseat the Reds and bring U.E. back into the C.I.O. parlor. But, although he had collected the biggest bloc of votes since the Communists bounced him out of the U.E. presidency eight years ago, Jim Carey's words were still louder than his deeds. With mounting rage he stormed against the well-laid plans of the left-winger's President Albert Fitzgerald.

"Stop lying, Fitzgerald," screamed Carey at one point. "The C.I.O. helped build labor--you Communists are against labor . . . I tell you, Fitzgerald, you're not going to take the U.E. out of the C.I.O."

"No, Carey . . ." Fitzgerald shouted back, "you are not going to confuse the minds of these delegates . . . We want to stay in the C.I.O."

"Then get out of the C.P.," yelled an anti-Communist from the rear.

--Or Else. The party-liners rolled on. Burly President Fitzgerald rode victoriously into another term by a vote of 2,335 to 1,500; Secretary-Treasurer Julius Emspak and James J. Matles, the U.E.'s top organizer, rode back in with him. Then the triumphant triumvirate threw down a six-point ultimatum to Phil Murray. Its net: punish other C.I.O. unions for "raiding" U.E. membership ranks--or else.

To back up the threat, the well-controlled convention authorized the U.E. bosses to withhold membership payments from C.I.O. headquarters if Murray rejected the obviously unacceptable demands. As an added fillip, it approved a resolution indirectly accusing Murray's steelworkers of selling out labor by accepting the recommendations of President Truman's steel fact-finding board and abandoning first-round wage demands.

Did this mean the U.E. was pulling out of the C.I.O.?--a reporter asked. "Like President Roosevelt, I'd have to say that was an iffy question," said Fitzgerald. But later he talked more clearly: "If the C.I.O. doesn't want to meet our demands," he snorted, "it can go to hell."

In Toronto, Ont. last week, slender, jug-eared L. S. Buckmaster returned from four months in limbo to win re-election as president of the C.I.O.'s United Rubber Workers of America. Fired from the presidency after a Pottstown, Pa. local president charged him with trying to disrupt the local and fomenting a riot at one of its meetings, Conservative Buckmaster cleared himself in a seven-hour debate at the union's annual convention, then beat his perennial rival, George Bass, for another term.

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