The Daily Bulletin

WHY THE CIO IS FAIRER TO THE NEGRO THAN THE AFL

In the June issue of the robust Negro Digest magazine, top rank Negro and white CIO and AFL officials make a strong defense of the manner in which their respective organizations deal with Negro workers.

Speaking for the CIO on the question as to "which union is fairer to the Negro: AFL or CIO." are CIO President Philip Murray, CIO Board Member, Willard S. Townsend, and Ferdinand Smith, secretary, National Maritime union. For the AFL are its President, William Green, and Dr. D. G. Garland, AFL organizer.

The views of Townsend and Smith are honest and well considered. Though both are high-placed CIO officials and though both must feel a strong desire to get along with their more powerful white colleagues, neither attempted to soft-pedal or side-step the quite considerable prejudice which exists in the CIO. Moreover, both seem to appreciate fully the role which Negro workers must play in the unions to eliminate such prejudice. Dr. Garland, seems to lack both sincerity and knowledge of the AFL.

CIO President Murray believes that the majority of the American people will accept economic and citizenship equality for Negroes. AFL President Green states that the "great majority of the American people are on the side of the Negro in his efforts to make a decent life for himself and his children in this country."

Despite this similarity the overwhelming majority of Negro people, according to the Negro Digest poll taker, Wallace Lee, believes that the CIO is fairer to Negroes than is the AFL.

Despite discouraging experiences in the south, the north, and occasionally open rebellion in its own ranks, the CIO leadership feels it must continue to press its fight for full political, economic and citizenship equality for Negroes as well as for other workers. This equality is to be fought for not only within its own ranks but in the whole community both north and south. To the CIO real equality cannot be established for Negro union members so long as it exists in the community of which local CIO units are a part.

So the CIO challenges and engages in a relentless struggle against the whole bi-racial system with its jim crow, discrimination, segregation and frustration of human life.

In sharp contrast many AFL unions, if not the federation itself, are trying to make trade unionism operate within the framework of the bi-racial system and the requirements of white supremacy. This is strong and blunt, but fundamentally this is consciously or subconsciously the AFL point of view. To illustrate; AFL unions as a rule will not demand new job opportunities for Negroes or that Negroes be given equal right for promotion to skilled jobs. Many of the devices these unions have developed for keeping Negroes out of certain types of work and of participating in union affairs run from the devious to the blunt.

But for the jobs already allowed Negroes under the present system of segregation and discrimination, the AFL will extend to Negroes the benefits of collective bargaining. It would, with some self righteousness, make the lot of Negro coal hikers, building laborers, laundry workers, and other Negro workers more durable in their present limited economic area, but it will not do anything to break down those barriers which prevent Negroes from sharing more fully in the economic life of the country. Such changes would be "special inducements" which Mr. Green says the AFL will not make.

The total situation in CIO and AFL unions is not as clear cut as the foregoing statement would indicate. Many AFL unions like the International Ladies Garment Workers union and the American Federation of Teachers have attitudes similar to those described for CIO. Various local and regional CIO affiliates have attitudes similar to those ascribed to the AFL.

But the decision on fairness, earnestness and democracy goes to the CIO.