The Daily Worker

For Democracy in the
Painters Union

THE rank and file workers of the Painters' Union are facing brutal fascist attacks by gangsters hired by Phillip Zausner, of District Council 9.
In open rebellion against the graft, corruption and anti-working class policies of this Zausner, who has already spent $160,000 of the painters hard-earned money to build himself a union machine, the rank and file workers have nominated a slate of their own, Louis Weinstein, Frank Wedl, and L. J. Stevens.
These militant rank and file workers face not only slugging, but even death at the hands of the rats, it is rumored. Zausner has imported from the underworld of Chicago. Three workers have already been sent to the hospital by Zausner's rats.
This is a challenge to every honest, decent painter in the union. The issues here are more than the terrorism of the Zausner gangsters. The issues are whether or not the painters will have the right to express their own will in a democratic way, whether or not they can preserve their united strength for effective struggles for better conditions.
A union in which the rank and file cannot give free expression to their own wishes, without meeting gangsterism, cannot put up an effective fight against the employers.
The fight against gangsterism is thus part and parcel of the fight against the employers, part of the fight for better wages and conditions.
To defend their union and their inner democracy, the painters must organize at once to take all measures necessary to see to it that their own wishes find expression in the elections-not the wishes of gangsters. This includes the organization of defense corps to defend the painters and the orderly processes of democratic procedure within the union.
Painters, defend democracy in the union!
Defeat gangsterism and terrorism! Support the rank and file slate!
Take the union into your own hands!