Magnificent Tokenism

Beneath the graceful curve of the St. Louis Gateway Arch lies the empty shell of an underground visitors' center, partially completed when electricians' from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. local early this month walked off the job, stopping all work. Their complaint: the contractor had hired plumbers from the rival Congress of Industrial Unions, a labor organization formed by St. Louis Negroes, who cannot get into the lily-white building locals.

The walkout prompted the Labor Department last week to request federal action against" the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Building Trades Council under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, marking the first time that this law has been invoked against a union. "The labor movement is all for the civil rights movement," said Sherwood Ross, an official of the Washington, D.C., Urban League. "But when it comes to getting Negroes into the highly skilled building crafts, labor sings The Star-Spangled Banner in the front of the union hall and Dixie in the back."

Menial Tickets. Civil rights leaders are understandably aggrieved over the continuing discrimination against Negroes by U.S. labor unions, particularly in the face of growing shortages of skilled workers. By 1975, the Department of Labor estimates, the U.S. will need 2,000,000 more skilled workers than it has today, double the increase of the 18 years from 1947 to 1964. Nonetheless, Negroes are almost totally excluded from high-paying craft unions. "The majority of the 1,500,000 Negroes who hold union cards," says Whitney Young, Director of the National Urban League, "have tickets to do the hardest, dirtiest and most menial jobs that industry requires."

Skilled workers such as electricians and plumbers naturally command the best wages. Where they can, they jealously restrict admission to unions--and apprenticeship--to their own progeny. A recent Labor Department survey of apprenticeship programs in twelve major cities found only 16 Negroes training to be electricians, five learning plumbing, and two Negro apprentice sheet-metal workers. As a result, a typical city such as Chicago, with a Negro population greater than the entire population of Baltimore, has no Negro sheet-metal workers, only 40 Negro pipe fitters, 200 electricians.

White-Collar Aspirations. Unionleaders lay the blame on the paucity of Qualified Negro applicants, point out that a good skilled worker today may be as skilled as many laboratory technicians of 25 years ago. "When we find a Negro with the basic educational qualifications," says John Cinquemani, executive secretary of the Los Angeles Building Construction Trades Council, "he tends to look down on these fields and tries for a white-collar job."

In the past, because of labor's longtime support of the civil rights movement, Negro leaders have been loath to speak out against discriminatory practices. Now, though few skilled-trades union locals are totally white, civil rights organizations are increasingly restive over the fact that Negro membership rarely amounts to more than a percentage point. Negro apprenticeships to less than 2%. That, says Herbert Hill, labor secretary of the N.A.A.C.P., "is a magnificent expression of tokenism."

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