Son of Joe Hill

After a costly ten-week strike last fall, the United Auto Workers won an immediate 13% wage increase from General Motors and then turned on Chrysler, which yielded similar raises, including a 13% pay boost for several thousand white-collar workers.

Last week officers of the U.A.W. in Detroit found themselves in a painful role reversal. Around Solidarity House, the U.A.W. headquarters, 350 of the union's own hirelings, members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Office and Professional Employees International Union, had thrown a picket line, demanding that the U.A.W. cough up the same 13% raise that it had won for the auto workers.

It mattered little that the office workers already earn between $188 and $196 per week--compared to $191 for most auto workers--and that the U.A.W. was offering a weekly increase of $8.05.

"They want more than the people who pay them," complained U.A.W. Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey. The most traumatic part of it came when the U.A.W. men had to cross the picket line to enter Solidarity House, an act of almost mystical impiety equivalent to the Women's Christian Temperance Union throwing a cocktail party. The scene suggested facing mirrors--unions within unions, strikes within strikes, Joe Hill Jr. picketing his old man. And just how well is the Office Employees Union paying its hired help?

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