ustxtxb_obs_1966_01_21_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Page 11

by

mealcare 48. Houston Post, Oct. 31, 1965. 49. Houston Chronicle, Dec. 20, 1964. 50. Dallas Morning News, July 7, 1965. War on Poverty 51. Weekly report, March 22, 1964. 52. Weekly report, March 29, 1964. 53. San Antonio Express, Oct. 10, 1963. 54. Obs., Sept. 3 and Sept. 17, 1965. 55. Obs., Feb. 19, 1965. 56. Obs., March 5, 1965. Labor 57. Houston Chronicle, June 30, 1965. 58 News release, Oct. 8, 1965. 59. A Program for Conservatives, p. 51. 60. Ibid., pp. 54-55. 61. Special report of the Texas Industrial Union Council, 1961. 62. Robstown Record, June 6, 1965. 63. Dallas Morning News, March 5, 1965. Housing 64. Dallas Morning News, Jan. 14, 1966. 65. Houston Post, March 15, 1963. 66. Congressional Record-Senate, August 11, 1965, p. 19,264. 67. Dallas Times Herald, March 3, 1965. 68. News release, April, 1963. Farm, Policy 69. A Program for Conservatives, p. 143-4. 70. Obs., Sept. 7, 1962. 71. News release, Sept. 19, 1965. Education 72. Corpus Christi Caller, Sept. 19, 1965. 73. Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1965. 74. Weekly radio report, Oct. 13, 1963. 75. ADA World, Oct., 1962. 76. Obs., Sept. 17, 1965. 77. ADA World, Nov., 1965. 78. Weekly radio report, Oct. 13, 1963. 79. Ibid. 80. News release, Aug. 6, 1965. 81. Weekly radio report, Feb. 9, 1964. Conservation 82. News release, Sept. 20, 1965. 83. News release, Oct. 24, 1965. 84. Dallas Morning News, April 4, 1965. 85. Dallas Morning News, July 18, 1965. Oil 86. Dallas Times Herald, Sept. 22, 1965. 87. Report to the people, July 21, 1963. 88. Report to the people, June 13, 1964. Tower, Goldwater, and the JBS 89. Dallas Times Herald, Oct. 20, 1963. 90. San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 6, 1965. 91. Corpus Christi Caller, Nov. 14, 1964. 92. Houston Chronicle, Sept., 1965. 93. Houston Chronicle, Sept. 18, 1965. 0 `Convince Them of What They Believe’ Can Texas Labor Help the Poor? San Antonio Something new appears to be happening in organized labor in Texas. Texas AFLCIO President Hank Brown’s repeated declarations that the organized workers have a duty to organize those who are poor and divided, even though doing so will cost union money and will require some of the organizing zeal of the thirties, led to a new kind of labor meeting in San Antonio early this month. Here were the assembled brass of Texas labor and representatives of many of the international unions, standing and wildly applauding a Catholic priest who had just told them to get out of town and stay out if they didn’t organize the poor into unions. The internationals are to organized labor what the great national companies are to U.S. business; the state labor offices are to labor what the state manufacturers’ associations are to business. Only if the internationals commit their treasure and their men to a labor project can it really have substance. Repeated declarations by Texas AFL-CIO that the poor mexicano and Negro workers must be organized could have no effect unless and until the big internationals decided to go to work on that organizing. Thus it mattered that during a recent labor meeting in San Francisco, representatives of ten internationals met with Brown and listened to his appeal for the commitment and wherewithal to organize the Latin-American workers in San Antonio and in the toes of Texas, the lower Valley. This month’s meeting in San Antonio was intended to convince staffers of the internationals who were present to go back to their bosses and sell them on committing the internationals to the project. Brown wants a quarter of a million dollars and at least ten internationals involved in a twoyear drive. He said in San Antonio that seven internationals have already said yes, but their names were not given out. Apart from the fact that the real power in labor lies with the internationals, “organizing the unorganized” in Texas has two other kinds of preliminary difficulties: the union men themselves have lost much of their crusading zeal, so that not many volunteers can be mustered for pioneering 8 The Texas Observer in the unorganized fields ; and in Texas, the poorest, most underpaid, most numerous unorganized workers are Negroes and Mexican-Americans, which weakens organized labor’s zeal for organizing them to whatever extent racial hostilities persist among Texas union men. Kermit Davison, Huntsville, has been put on Texas AFL-CIO’s staff as a public information officer for labor in East Texas. Father of one of the student leaders in the Huntsville civil rights movement, \(who Davison says is now in college in Huntsville, giving most of his time to his studies, work now consists of encouraging Negroes to pay their poll taxes. Where, the ObserVer asked him, would he start, organizing the unorganized workers of East Texas? He said in the woods industry-lumber, pulp wood. The two big companies, he said, are Champion Paper and Fiber Co. and International Paper Co. In addition, he said, there are a number of sawmills; he specified Temple Industries, L&M, Park, Batcher Lumber Co. Wages for the thousands of workers, many of them Negroes, in this industry, Davison said, run as low as 50 or 75 cents an hour, and on the average are perhaps $1.25. BROWN BEGAN the conference in San Antonio with the fact that the industrial wage average in San Antonio is $79 a week, the lowest of any U.S. city with a quarter million people or more. J. Elro Brown, international oilworkers’ staffer, says unorganized workers in the Valley make 50 cents an hour up to $1.90 an hour, top. Only eight out of 100 workers in San Antonio belong to unions, Brown said. Challenging racial discrimination in clear words-as he and his secretary-treasurer, Roy Evans, have done since they took over the Texas AFL-CIO, carrying on the traditions of their immediate predecessors, Jerry Holleman and Fred Schmidt-Brown said any union member who was guilty of racial discrimination would be cast out as “unworthy of membership.” It appeared, from the round of self-introductions that then followed, that representatives of the international unions of the brickworkers, meatcutters, oilworkers, ironworkers, bookbinders, and communications workers were present. In addition, local representatives, any of whom might have been commissioned to represent their internationals at the meeting, were present from the operating engineers, rubber workers, painters, carpenters, ‘pipefitters, electrical workers, cement workers, stone masons, machinists, transit workers, rubber workers, auto workers, retail clerks, brewery workers, federal employees, printers. Lester Graham, regional director of labor for the state of Texas, said that with three and a half million workers, Texas has fewer than half a million in unions. But he discussed the problem of volunteers for organizing with candor. “We do not have many more volunteer workers, not too many,” he allowed. “They don’t have time, and they have to make a living. It costs money to organize. But it’s just like bread on the water, it comes, back in the form of cake.” National labor, he said, would provide a coordinator and as much manpower as other duties permitted, if the relevant union authorities agreed. THE INDUSTRIAL UNION DE-. CIO is in effect the old CIO; Walter Reuther is the IUD president. Its national director of organizing is a fiery, pudgy orator named Nick Zonarich, who came out of the mines in Pennsylvania and was formerly president of the aluminum workers. Zonarich had a number of his staffers present in San Antonio, and his message was plain: IUD is ready now to start a drive in Brownsville and didn’t need to wait until March \(when Brown has another meeting scheduled to receive the final decisions’ of the internationals and get The most impressive characteristic of the San Antonio meeting was the way the speakers felt moved to say the truth that the labor movement, \(implicitly as comgone soft. “Many of us have attended many meetings about the organizing of the unorganized,” Zonarich said. “It’s true of all our conventions-we’re talking and passing resolutions and it seems we get very little action out of it.” But IUD has been doing the work for “the past couple of years now,” and is in “the business of organizing the unorganized,” he said. \(Elections have