ustxtxb_obs_1959_11_27_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

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NAME ADDRESS AGE BRAINPOWER IS OUR MOST VITAL RESOURCE! You can’t .dig education out e the earth. There’s only one place where business and industry can get the educated men and women so vitally needed for future progress. That’s from our eolleges and universities. Today these institutions are doing their best to meet the need. But they face a crisis. The demand for brains is increasing fast, and so is the pressure ed college applications. . More money must be raised each year to expand fricilities bring faculty salaries up to an adequate standard provide a sound education for the young people who need and deserve it. As s practical business measure, help the colleges or universities of your choicenow! The returns will be greater than you think. TEACHERS’ UNION CONTENDS IN S. A. ‘Commuters’ in Dispute SAN ANTONIO “It is hard,” but “the response is remarkable.” So says Robert C. Hahnel, president of the new American Federation of Teachers’ local in San Antonio. Arguing against what they call administrator-dominated teachers’ associations, union organizers are running into resistance from San Antonio teachers. About 200 teachers turned out for the main organizational meeting to hear Hugh MacColl, organizer for AFT; Rep. Dean Johnston, public relations counsel for the Houston Teachers’ local, and Rep. Bill Kilgarlin, a Houston teacher who belongs to AFT; and Fred Schmidt, secretary-treasurer of Texas AFL-CIO. How many joined? “More than 200 teachers stayed to the bitter end of the business meetingthat is all I can say,” Hahnel replied. MacColl will not give figures either. “This Texas State Teachers’ Assn. has done a terrific jobfor the superintendents,” Mac Coll said. The Dallas superintendent makes $35,000 a year, he said, but Texas teachers’ salaries on the average are $2,000 a year less than SESSION CAR Is NOW LIKELY AUSTIN A special session, in January is now likely. Gov . Daniel set Jan. 9 for three special legislative elections, including the one to replace Sen. Jimmy Phillips, Angleton. \(Rep. Sain Bass has joined Rep. Jerome Jones, Babe Schwartz, and Maco Satewart in the race for view of “the consideration being given” to a special session. He told West Texas reporters if he calls a session it will be as early in 1960 as possible. He also announced he is sending letters to legislators asking if there is “a reasonable probability of success in a 30-day special session,” especially for a teachers’ pay raise. Meanwhile, the business drive for general sales tax sentiment launched in a letter last week by the Texas Manufacturers’ Assn. further by Preston Weatherred, the Dallas business lobbyist, who wrote industry and trade association leaders that business is in danger from anti-business taxes; that one representative has told him 93 of his House colleagues would probably favor the general sales tax; and that “We believe it to be a fair statement that in the Senate a majority believe that a general sales tax is preferable to the present hodgepodge, bean drawing formula.” The South Texas Chamber of Commerce came out for the general sales tax and started polling its members to see if they agree with this. The president of the Texas Automotive Dealers Assn., C. B. Smith of Austin, protested any higher gasoline taxes for nonhighway purposes, as the Texas Good Roads Assn. has also. Speaking i n Fredericksburg, Atty. Gen. Will Wilson said, “Let’s not levy any new taxes until we have streamlined our old ones. Let’s keep our increased spending keyed to the expansion of our income.” In Lufkin, Martin Dies, Sr., asked Wilson to be more specific. “Where would Mr. Wilson economize?” he asked. “Certainly Mr. Wilson will not suggest that old age pensions should be reduced ..” in large cities around the country. “Teachers in Texas are already paying $2,000 a year dues for the privilege of not having a union,” he said. MacColl said the union is looking over Austin now. “We’ve got leads galore in Austin,” he said. He asserts that San Antonio teachers are mostly unaware that they “work on a ‘contract’ which can be severed at any time with 30 days’ notice. They are told this is better than tenure.” San Antonio Supt. Thomas B. Portwood has said that he will not interfere with teachers joining the union but that he does not see what teachers have to gain, since their present organizations are adequate. Hahnel says the union’s prospects depend on the events of the next two years. Unionizing efforts among San Antonio teachers failed twice before within two-year periods, he said, and “If we can make it beyond that we’re here to stay.” Hahnel says since the present’ teachers’ organizations are “administrator-controlled, they \(the what they really think.” The union sustained blows from teachers when the school principal and the 45 teachers at J. T. Brackenridge elementary school signed a statement “denouncing” the AFT. Said their statement, in part: “The teachers do not consider themselves laborers, but professional people … Many union bosses are not educated and do not understand teachers’ problems, while those who are presidents of teacher organizations have either been teachers or they are still in the profession.” Twenty-one teachers at Ralph Waldo Emerson junior school signed a statement that they are satisfied with their present associations and are “not interested” in being organized by AFT. San Antonio Express editorialized teachers would be “somewhat less than wise” organizing a union. They are now well organized, reasoned the Express; their dues are $33 a year against $60 a year in AFT. AFT would be “perhaps more militant,” but the existing groups stress professional as well as salary aspects of the teachers’ interests, the Express argued. SAN ANTONIO A congressional investigagation of workers who live in Mexico and work in Texas border cities has been requested by Texas labor unions. A “commuter” system has developed in which residents of such border towns as Juarez, Reynosa, and Brownsville give a “permanent residence” address in the United States and on this basis commute to work in Texas daily from their homes in Mexico. This has caused extensive indignation among some Texas unions, especially the butchers’ union which has been trying for eight months to extract a contract from Peyton Packing Co. in El Paso. The members of the union won a union election in December but could not get a contract and struck in May. They maintain that the commuter system gives employers all along the border an inexhaustible source of strike-breaking workers who live at the low Mexican standard of living and earn Texas wages higher than those in Mexico but lower than wages U. S. workers need to sustain themselves at the U. S. standard of living. Marcus Neelly, director of immigration for the El Paso district, one day in September conducted a spot check of the bridges and counted 9,899 persons crossing from Juarez who have been given resident status in the United States. A resolution adopted at the Texas AFL-CIO convention here last week estimated the total “commuters” along the TexasMexico border at 50,000. Mullinax, Wells, Morris, and Mauzy, the Dallas law firm which represents the butchers’ local in El Paso, sought from the federal government a ruling against commuters unless they actually live in the United States. The company protested in language which confirmed the importance of the problem, and the El Paso HeraldPost attested to its commonplace acceptance in El Paso. An August 3, Charles Chauvet, vice president of Peyton, wrote the Secretary of Labor saying that if the government proposed to take seriously the union’s request, Peyton wanted a full investigation and the setting of the facts straight. Many of the union’s facts were incorrect, Chauvet said. “Any rulings of this magnitude would in themselves have serious economic effects in the El Paso area and even more in the community of Juarez, Mexico,” Chauvet wrote the government. The Herald-Post, writing on the controversy in its Sept. 25 issue, observed, “If such a ruling should be made by the Secretary of Labor, many businesses in El Paso might be hard hit. The American Smelting and Refining Co., for instance, employs large numbers of Mexican nationals.” Neelly, the immigration director, has held that union charges that “wetbacks” were involved are “unfounded.” He checked at Peyton and found only one wetbackthat is, a Mexican in the U. S. illegallyand this one fellow evidently had tricked both the company and the immigration officials, he said. The union does not now maintain that wetbacks are involved. Their lawyers argue that the “permanent residents” are not permanent residents. ‘Live in Juarez’ Charles Morris, attorney for the union, says that at Peyton, “a lot .of strikebreakers are being used who live in Juarez and work in the United States.” There is no such thing as a border-crossing .card, he said. “A subterfuge has developed. People apply for permanent resident status as immigrants … They don’t move.” There is even an international streetcar between Juarez and El Paso the commuter can ride daily. But, says Morris, “Officially the situation does not exist. Nobody knows for sure how many are doing this.” Morris said it is fundamental in freshman law courses that “you establish residence by residence not by intending to reside someplace, or giving a fraudulent statement.” Morris said the El Paso immigration office provided him a copy of the permanent residence application. Item 15 of this form, No. SF510, says, “I intend to remain in the United States permanently or said Morris, “is generally filled out, ‘permanente’.” Item 19 says, “My final address in the United States is ….” A person whose application is approved is given a card saying he was “admitted to the United States as an immigrant.” “It’s an absolute legal fiction,” maintains attorney Morris. An Inter-office Ruling The Dallas law firm asked the Secretary of Labor to act on a provision of law authorizing him to exclude aliens from the U. S. if “the employment of such aliens will adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the two workers in the United States similarly employed.” The firm asked for a ruling certifying that employment of Mexican residents during the course of a strike did so affect the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers. Secretary James Mitchell sent an investigator, Lawrence Parness, to El Paso. Parness’s report has not been made public. As an inter-office matter the Secretary of Labor issued a certification on the subject, but it has not been made public. The Dallas lawyers wired Neelly demanding the workers ‘be excluded “without delay.” According to Morris, Neelly and Irving Schroder of the immigration office responded over the phone that the ruling applied only to new visas and would not be applied to the commuters already approved. A resolution enacted by the labor convention here charged: “The immigration laws are thus being used as a subterfuge to allow cheap labor to be employed on this side of the border without requiring such workers to reside in the United States …. workers are permitted fraudulently to assert that they intend to reside permanently in the United States, although they … in fact continue to live in Mexico.” “We feel that an agency of the United States government should not allow itself to be used by employers as a source of alien labor to defeat a legitimate strike,” the resolution said. Morris, asked whether labor should not also be concerned about the welfare of the Mexican workers, responded that labor has no objection to legitimate permanent residents of the U. S. working in the U. S. at wage levels set in relationship to the cost of living on the U. S. side. He said that the commuter practice makes it virtually impossible to organize plants along the Texas side of the U. S.-Mexico border. “It’s hard as hell to organize ’em, and what’s the point? They have an almost foolproof guarantee against unionization.” if you want to know what the college crisis means to you, write for froe booklet toe HIGHER EDUCATION, Sox 36, Times Square Stash*, Now York 36, New York, Shaw Transportation Company, Inc. E. P. SHAW, PRESIDENT Houston, Texas THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 November 27, 1959