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p The AFL-CIO leadership, having given the Democratic Party crucial support in the 1960 presidential election, 93 expected that the promises made by Kennedy during the election campaign would be fulfilled. Rightist labour leaders kept telling their union rank-and-file that in the person of the new president and his administration they had acquired true friends who understood the needs of working people and who were favourably inclined to their demands. It soon became clear, however, that the promises to improve the economic situation were in large part dictated by the desire to win votes. The widely publicised New Frontiers programmes took the form, primarily, of a series of legislative measures having a limited objective—to overcome the recurrent crisis of overproduction.

p At the same time, the Kennedy Administration, fearing an intensification of public dissatisfaction, also agreed to a certain expansion of social legislation, which could be viewed as a partial concession to the working people. A number of laws were passed directly or indirectly connected with job training and retraining, and laws providing for a slight increase in the minimum wage, and increase in assistance to persons living in areas of chronic depression, and a temporary lengthening of the period over which unemployment insurance benefits could be paid. A government ruling (made in January 1962) also officially recognised the right of federal employees to organise and their right to collective bargaining.  [93•1  Although the Kennedy Administration’s social policy was a step forward in comparison with the policy pursued by the Eisenhower Administration, it was, on the whole, quite limited and failed to deal with the basic problems facing the working class. The administration rejected a major union demand for a shorter workweek and even sought to keep wages from going up by introducting socalled guidelines.

p The country’s union rank-and-file were clearly disappointed in such a policy. Soon—in December 1961—due to pressure from below, an AFL-CIO convention adopted a resolution criticising the government for taking inadequate steps to fight unemployment. Three months later, in February 1962, the AFL-CIO Executive Council, again in response to pressure from below, decided to send to Kennedy a 94 delegation made up of seven top labour leaders, headed by George Meany, to express labour’s dissatisfaction with the administration’s activity. During that meeting, Kennedy assured the delegates that the administration would pay closer attention to union demands. In early 1963, during its winter session in Florida, the AFL-CIO Executive Council again decided to seek a meeting with the President. The union leaders agreed among themselves that they should tell Kennedy in private about their disappointment with respect to the administration’s "soft proposals" aimed at bolstering the economy.  [94•1 

p The only real chance of winning concessions from the administration in the social sphere (as progressive unions had frequently pointed out) was through the organisation of broad public and organised labour movement pressure on the government. However, the AFL-CIO’s ruling clique, striving to preserve and strengthen its alliance with the government and not wishing to enter into a conflict with President Kennedy, did everything possible to adapt to his policy. Commenting on this fact, American sociologist Daniel Bell wrote: "The Labour leaders have easy entry to the White House. They love the status and the attention that the drive up the curving road to the White House door brings. But it is widely felt that, in consequence, they have also become captives of the administration and have lost their capacity for independent action.”  [94•2  And The New York Times, describing the prevailing sentiments within the AFL-CIO leadership, wrote that most of the labour leaders sincerely sympathised with the President, that some of them were afraid that he was overly sensitive to criticism. They dared not risk hurting his feelings because they wanted to stay in the good graces of the White House.

p To maintain their influence with the membership, the Rightist labour leaders, of course, had to speak out in favour of such traditional worker demands as a reduction in the workweek, higher wages and better working conditions. Nonetheless, they failed to take decisive action toward these ends.

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p The labour policy enunciated by Lyndon Johnson (after President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963) largely coincided with the policy of his predecessor. As the presidential election approached, Johnson began to play up to the trade union leadership.  [95•1  In his message to Congress in January 1964, he advanced a number of programmes (the war on poverty, expansion of the system of worker retraining, youth employment, social welfare and social security improvements, etc.) that were essentially an expanded variety of Kennedy’s proposals, but with a larger dose of social demagogy.

p In the 1964 presidential election, frightened by the reactionary and openly anti-labour platform of the Republican Party and its candidate, Goldwater, the US labour unions advocated “unconditional” support for Johnson. Quite characteristic and reflecting the sentiments and hopes of many labour leaders was the assessment of the election results made by the president of the International Typographical Union, Elmer Brown, who said that the labour movement was proud that it played a decisive role in defeating the anti-labour forces and electing new, liberal people to the House of Representatives and the Senate. The unions, he said, had every right to expect that their needs would now be taken into consideration.  [95•2 

p The strong labour support given Johnson during the 1964 presidential election noticeably strengthened the “alliance”, which had begun to deteriorate in the last year of Kennedy’s 96 presidency, between the Democratic Administration and the AFL-CIO leadership. Through his assistant Lawrence O’Brien, Johnson expressed his thanks "for labour’s political help" and promised to fulfil a number of labour’s demands, including the demand that Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act be repealed.  [96•1  "To a greater degree than ever before in the history of this country,” said Meany at an AFL-GIO conference in Washington on January 11, 1965, "the stated goals of the Administration and of Congress, on the one hand, and of the labour movement, on the other, are practically identical.”  [96•2 

p However, it became clear very soon after the election that President Johnson and the liberal “friends” of labour in Congress had no intention whatever of meeting their commitments. As noted in The Christian Science Monitor on January 13, 1965, "AFL-CIO, which worked hard for President Johnson’s election, is far from satisfied with what the administration has done or what it has proposed”. Thus the labour union leadership, under constant pressure from the rank-and-file membership, had more and more frequently to express open dissatisfaction with the Johnson Administration’s policy. In October 1965, George Meany said that the AFL-CIO cannot agree with the cynical notion that election platforms are built only for use during elections and then to be forgotten and discarded.

p The AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting in Miami Beach in February 1966, came out with strong criticism of the Johnson Administration. "If the administration doesn’t make recommendations acceptable to labour,” it was noted at that meeting, "we will make our own way.”  [96•3  In March 1966, at a conference of the construction workers’ union held in Washington D. C., Meany made a similar statement to the effect that labour unions are independent of either political party. The New York Herald Tribune took this to mean that labour had decided to withdraw the support it had traditionally given the Democratic Party.  [96•4 

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p Immediately after the February meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, Secretary of Labour Willard Wirtz, expressing the administration’s reaction to such AFL-CIO statements, said at a press conference that he was "terribly concerned" with what he called the "apparent development of antagonism" between the unions and the Johnson Administration. He claimed it could become an obstacle to passage of labour legislation and rupture a relationship that brought some social legislation in the past.  [97•1 

p Despite the constant complaints made by labour leaders about individual congressmen and even about the Johnson Administration, neither Meany nor the AFL-CIO Executive Council group had any intention of breaking up their “ alliance” with the Democratic Party. On the contrary, trying everything possible to strengthen it, Meany’s group hoped that by giving unconditional support to the administration’s aggressive foreign policy, and particularly the dirty war in Vietnam, it could win certain concessions for the unions.

p But as subsequent events showed, their hopes were not justified. The administration’s anti-labour policy, the steady rise in prices, the growing tax burden, cutbacks in appropriations for non-military objectives, and the curtailment of the Great Society and War on Poverty programmes because of the escalation of the Vietnam war, all this evoked growing dissatisfaction among the working people. There was mounting criticism aimed not only at the administration but also at the conciliatory union leadership for its passiveness and unwillingness to lead the struggle of the masses to achieve their major economic objectives.

p As we mentioned earlier, labour dissatisfaction with the Democratic Administration’s policies was prompted by a number of things, chief among which were the President’s persistent efforts to hold wages down with the help of socalled guidelines, the administration’s and Congress’s open antagonism to union policy on a shorter workweek and higher minimum wage and the administration’s failure to fulfil its promise to repeal Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act.

p The business of setting guidelines for wage increases was first introduced by President Kennedy in 1961-1962. This 98 initiative, according to the well-known bourgeois economist John Kenneth Galbraith, "was, perhaps, the most important innovation in economic policy of the administration of President John F. Kennedy. In the earliest days of administration, it was agreed among those concerned with economic policy that some special mechanism for restraint would be required were there to be a close approach to full employment".  [98•1  It should be noted that among those connected with the implementation of the Democratic Party’s economic programme, an important role was played by Galbraith himself, who had for a number of years advocated setting up "public machinery for restraining wage and price increases" as the "only hope for handling the wage-price spiral".  [98•2 

p In line with these ideas, a report by the President’s Council of Economic Advisers stressed in 1962 that "the general guide for non-inflationary wage behaviour is that the rate of increase in wage rates (including fringe benefits) in each industry be equal to the trend rate of overall productivity increase".  [98•3  Thus, establishment of wage guidelines became the official economic policy of the Democratic Administration for the following years. Speaking at a UAW conference in May 1962, President Kennedy personally set forth the "anti-inflationary formula" under which the unions were supposed to display "social responsibility" and refrain from asking for wage increases above the 3 per cent per year ceiling recommended by government economists. "Unjustified wage demands which require price increases,” Kennedy told the convention, "are equally as contrary to the national interest as are unjustified profit demands which require price increases.”  [98•4 

p The administration’s "anti-inflationary formula" actually turned out to be aimed against satisfying the just economic 99 demands of the working class, while in no way restricting the growth of monopoly profits. Kennedy let businessmen know that their concern with maintaining profit margins was shared by the government. Speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce, he stated that "to the extent that you want to protect your profit margins, our interests are identical, for after all we in the national government have a large stake in your profits.”  [99•1  The government’s attempts to limit " unjustified wage demands" were aimed primarily at the interests of the most organised sections of the working class who were engaged in a hard struggle with the monopolies to win wage increases exceeding the national average. As for the millions of unorganised or poorly organised workers, the government’s guidelines did not envisage wage increases for them at all. The idea apparently was that the overall national wage increase level for workers should be, as a rule, lower than that established by the guidelines.

p The machinery for restraining wage increases proposed by Kennedy was put to wider use under Johnson. In 1964, 1965 and 1966, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers set the ceiling for annual wage increases at 3.2 per cent.  [99•2  Despite strong pressure from the government and the President himself, however, the AFL-CIO Executive Council and AFL-CIO conventions refused to recognise the national guidelines.  [99•3 

p The labour leaders’ unanimous condemnation of the government’s attempts to limit wage increases is explained above all by the aggravation of class antagonisms and the increased militancy manifested in recent years by the union rankand-file. Even the reactionary union leaders who openly supported the government’s aggressive policy in Vietnam did not dare to ask the members of their organisations to make sacrifices for the sake of that war, and in particular to embrace a policy of wage restrictions.

p On January 25, 1966, at Johnson’s initiative, a meeting took place between some of the President’s economic 100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1973/USLUT203/20071219/199.tx" advisers and AFL-CIO representatives in which an attempt was made to persuade the latter to support the government’s guideline of a 3.2 per cent ceiling for wage rises. The union representatives, however, declared their opposition to such a policy, calling it a "political manoeuvre" designed to restrict union demands during contract negotiations with employers. AFL-CIO president Meany pointed out in his statement that a ceiling on wage increases was unjustified because the government was doing nothing to curb the rise in prices and profits.  [100•1 

p Indeed, the Johnson Administration’s restrictive machinery operated only in one direction, that of freezing workers’ wages, for, as a rule, the American monopolies simply ignored the guidelines for keeping prices at a stable level. The big corporations steadily raised prices on steel, nonferrous metals, chemical raw materials and goods, agricultural raw materials and foodstuffs, etc.

p As a result, American workers were caught in the vice of the government’s policy of artificially freezing wages and the steady rise in the cost of living which resulted from price increases instituted by the industrial and agricultural monopolies.  [100•2 

p While Johnson’s Administration was trying to keep wage rises for working people below the 3.2 per cent level it had established, the salaries of government employees and high government officials went up appreciably. In 1967, Congress gave federal employees a 4.5 per cent pay hike and servicemen a 5 per cent raise, costing the American taxpayers an additional five billion dollars a year. In January 1969, Johnson signed a bill increasing the President’s salary (by 100 per cent), and a little later, substantial salary increases went to US Congressmen as well as the Vice-President and the House Speaker (from 40 to 50 per cent and more). 101 Commenting on these increases, the labour newspaper The Dispatcher, wrote: "Imagine if we in labour asked for anything like that—how they would howl and accuse us of being responsible for inflation. But they don’t seem to mind inflating their own wages one damn bit!”  [101•1 

p In early May 1966, Johnson unexpectedly called a meeting of the President’s Committee on Labour-Management Policy, which had been inoperative for over two years. He told the committee that "disquieting signs" were beginning to appear in the economy and asked the panel for its "views and constructive suggestions" on such "critical problems" as the effectiveness of his programme of "voluntary restraint" and the role of labour and management in implementing it. The "disquieting signs" he mentioned first of all were that wage increases were "substantially above" prior years and that consumer and wholesale prices had also risen.  [101•2 

p In calling a meeting of this committee, which had worked under Kennedy to foster class co-operation, Johnson hoped to win union support for the government’s guidelines. But his hopes were not realised; all seven labour representatives on the committee (including Meany, Reuther and Dubinsky) were strongly opposed to the guideposts, which they considered unfair to unions.  [101•3  Interestingly enough, even some committee members not connected with unions had reservations about the notion.

p Failing to win the committee’s support, Johnson switched to direct threats. On August 25, 1966, the day after an AFLCIO Executive Council decision on the need for substantial wage increases in view of the "inflation of profits”, Johnson warned the unions that the government might have to "take other measures" if they do not keep their wage demands within "reasonable bounds".  [101•4 

p Despite government threats and the monopolies’ antiunion propaganda, the unions boldly ignored the government’s restrictive guidelines in negotiating new collective agreements. Standing up for their vital interests and 102 refusing to make sacrifices for the sake of the dirty war in Vietnam, workers in many leading industries won greater wage increases than envisaged under the government’s guidelines. In the autumn of 1964, the UAW concluded an agreement with the giant General Motors, Ford and Chrysler corporations providing for wage increases of 4.8 to 5 per cent. When General Motors refused to meet the just demands of the workers a general strike was called which ended in a significant victory for the workers.

p A collective agreement signed in 1964 between the progressive independent International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers and Kennecott Copper, Anaconda and American Smelting and Refining gave the workers an annual 4 per cent wage increase. Substantial wage increases were also won in the maritime, the construction, aluminium, cement, glass and other industries. In the first half of 1965 alone, over 1,200,000 workers won wage increases of 4 per cent or more.

p Worker opposition to the government’s guidelines policy became even stiffer in 1966. Especially noteworthy that year was a victory scored by New York’s transport workers, which evoked strong displeasure in government circles. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Gardner Ackley called the agreement, which provided for wage increases far exceeding 3.2 per cent, "clearly inflationary" and not "in the public interest".  [102•1 

p Another labour victory came in the summer of 1966 after a 43-day strike by 35,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Worker solidarity in this hard-fought battle forced the owners of five leading air transport companies to sign a new labour contract with the union calling for wage increases of 5 per cent per year.

p Resolute working-class opposition to the national wageprice guidelines finally forced the Johnson Administration in 1967-1968 to move the guideline ceiling on wage increases to 5 per cent. However, most unions continued to set as their primary goal wage increases of no less than 6 to 8 per cent.

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p In 1969, the Nixon Administration set forth its own programme for fighting inflation. But, although guidelines were abandoned, and despite repeated statements to the effect that the new strategy for fighting inflation did not include wage or price controls, the Republican Administration called on working people to practise “self-restraint”. In October 1969, President Nixon personally exhorted union leaders to look at the situation realistically and to show restraint on the wage front. Thus, although the new administration at first did not put the former emphasis on the unworkable guidelines mechanism, it nonetheless demonstrated its resolve to continue applying pressure on the unions to prevent the growth of wages.

p In early 1971, however, the Nixon Administration made a sharp turn away from its repeatedly promised course of non-intervention in wage and price policy. In February, Congress, with active prompting by the administration, extended for another two years a previously passed measure giving the President the power to freeze wages and prices. And, shortly thereafter, the government placed a limit on wage rises (a top limit of 6 per cent per year) in the construction industry. A special board was created to regulate wage levels established by collective agreements. If the unions refused to agree to the fixed wage level, the government threatened to withdraw building contracts and not to recognise the “inflationary” wage rates. "Opposed on principle to government intervention in private wage and price decisions,” wrote the magazine Business Week, "Richard Nixon nevertheless took two more steps ... that add up to active intervention on a scale as great as anything undertaken by John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson.”  [103•1  In the following months, the Nixon Administration went considerably further in this direction. On August 16, 1971, the President officially proclaimed national state of emergency and came out with a programme of currency and economic measures designed to save the dollar and strengthen the economy. One of the programme’s main points was a nationwide 90- day price and wage freeze. The President called on unions to co-operate with the government and the monopolies and, 104 above all, to abandon all strike activity. Thus, the government adopted a policy that for two and a half years the Nixon Administration had rejected as contradicting the basic principles of the Republican Party, which believed in the free play of market forces.

p The struggle against stiff government guidelines was directly connected with the US working class’s struggle for a higher guaranteed minimum wage. Although in 1961, under Kennedy, an amendment to the Fair Labour Standards Act raised this minimum from $1.00 to $1.25 per hour, this did not bring any substantial improvement in the situation of the working class. Moreover, over 17,000,000 wage earners in low-paid categories were not covered by the law.  [104•1 

p At the Fifth Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO in November 1963, Meany declared that the "minimum wage itself, $1.25 an hour in this country today is a disgrace.... It is impossible to live in any part of the country, not only the big cities, on that amount—-This convention without question should declare for a higher, a substantially higher minimum wage and start a campaign to work for it".  [104•2  The convention set a minimum wage of $2.00 an hour as the goal toward which unions should strive. As noted in a special AFL-CIO statement, this increase was needed "simply to assure low-paid job holders a standard of living above the poverty level".  [104•3 

p The three-year struggle to raise the minimum wage finally ended in passage on September 24, 1966—on the eve of the congressional elections—of a law under which the minimum hourly wage would go up from $1.25 to $1.40 from February 1, 1967, and from $1.40 to $1.60 from February 1, 1968. The law covered an additional 8,000,000 workers, including some 6,000,000 working in the service industries and retail trade and, for the first time in US history, nearly 400,000 agricultural workers whose minimum wage became $1.00 an hour from February 1, 1967 and $1.30 from February 1, 1969.

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p The unions regarded the measures under the new law as inadequate, or as George Meany put it, "very, very small”. About 11,000,000 workers were still not covered and the increase for those that were was by and large offset by the rising cost of living. The AFL-CIO had expressed its dissatisfaction with the bill when it was being debated in Congress in March 1966, and had stated then that the labour movement would have to take "independent action" to get the minimum wage raised to $2.00 an hour.

p The conciliatory leadership of the AFL-CIO subsequently frequently reaffirmed, in word, its resolve to fight for the $2.00 an hour minimum wage; however, it failed to take concrete steps to organise any independent actions or to launch a national campaign.

p The 1960s saw an upsurge in the fight for a shorter workweek at the same weekly pay. The demand to reduce the workweek became prominent especially after the 1954 recession, when more and more workers and labour leaders began to come to the conclusion that this might be the best way to combat unemployment. It was brought out at the 17th National Convention of the Communist Party of the USA held in December 1959, that "the fight for the shorter workweek has, therefore, become the number one economic objective in the fight for jobs and security. A cut in the workweek cannot, any more than any other measure, provide a fundamental solution of job security under capitalism. But it is at least a significant measure of protection against the steady trend toward elimination of jobs.”  [105•1 

p The Democratic Administration and President Kennedy personally strongly opposed any cut in the workweek. In early 1961, Kennedy declared that "the forty-hour schedule is necessary if we are going to continue economic growth and maintain our commitments at home and abroad".  [105•2  A few years before that, Lyndon Johnson had objected to reducing the workweek in even stronger terms. In 1957, when he was a Senator from the State of Texas, he told labour leaders after the first Soviet sputnik was launched, "Candour and 106 frankness compel me to tell you that in my opinion the 40-hour week will not produce missiles.”  [106•1 

p At first, the AFL-CIO Executive Council did not even include the demand for a shorter workweek in the programme it submitted to the Kennedy Administration after the election. But two months later, in March 1961, George Meany, addressing a convention of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ and Bartenders’ International Union in Philadelphia, said that he had come to the conclusion that the only way to provide jobs for the greatest number of unemployed was through a reduction of the workweek. This switch by the AFL-CIO president and other labour leaders, who had firmly held that a longer workweek was necessary to win the cold war, was very significant. It reflected the growing dissatisfaction in US labour unions with the government’s ineffective efforts to eliminate chronic depression and reduce the vast army of unemployed. The union rank-and-file were pressing their leaders to display genuine leadership in the struggle to improve the economic position of the working people and, above all, to ensure some kind of job security. Between 1959 and 1961, as a result of such pressure, many leading unions (United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Ladies Garment Workers, United Radio and Electrical Workers, International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union of the West Coast, Chemical and Atomic Workers, Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers and many others) officially proclaimed their goal to be a shorter workweek with no reduction in pay.  [106•2 

p Despite continued assurances by union officials that they would give the Kennedy Administration "full and wholehearted support”, the AFL-CIO’s Fourth Constitutional Convention, held in December 1961, called upon affiliates "to give the highest priority to the search for and negotiation of ways to reduce hours of work to assure adequate job 107 opportunities now and in the future".  [107•1  No specific indication was made of how great a reduction should be sought. The main emphasis was made on a proposal calling for flexible adjustment of the workweek depending on the rate of unemployment and the extent to which the labour force is used. Congress was urged "to devote immediate attention to the legislation necessary to provide adjustments in the standard workweek without loss of pay consistent with the economic needs of the Nation and the national objective of a fullemployment economy".  [107•2  The convention also defined certain ways in which worktime could be reduced: longer paid vacations, more paid holidays, controlled overtime, introduction of an earlier retirement age, etc.

p The AFL-CIO convention stand on a shorter workweek was met with hostility not only by employers but even by the leading officials of a “friendly” administration.  [107•3  An intensive bourgeois propaganda campaign was launched to instill in the minds of the working people that a shorter workweek would not be in their interest since it would result in a sharp rise in prices, cause inflation and in the long run have a disastrous effect on the national economy. Multimillionaire Henry Ford, president of the Ford Motor Company, in a statement to the President’s Advisory Committee on Labour-Management Relations, said that reducing the workweek was "not only a poor remedy, it is also a harmful one; for it would retard the growth needed for the safety and welfare of our nation at this point in its history".  [107•4 

p Assertions of this kind by representatives of monopoly capital and their apologists were countered by progressive American economists who showed how a reduction of worktime would have a positive effect on the economy by increasing the number of jobs available, reducing unemployment and increasing labour productivity, all of which, in turn, would assure production growth.

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p A month after the AFL-CIO convention, New York City’s Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers concluded an agreement under which the workday for 9,000 electricians was reduced from six to five hours a day with a basic 25-hour workweek. As a result, 1,280 new jobs were created, which meant a 14 per cent increase in the number of workers employed.  [108•1 

p In April 1962, two other New York unions—the plumbers’ and bricklayers’—also demanded a shorter workweek—25 and 34 hours respectively. And in June, the International Longshoremen’s Association of the East Coast, representing 60,000 dock workers, set forth its demand for a 30-hour workweek.

p A short time later—in October 1962—at a convention of the United Steelworkers of America, one of the country’s largest unions, the main emphasis was made on reduction of worktime as the only effective way to combat the rising unemployment rate. A report to the convention delegates noted: "We must resign ourselves to a declining work force in Steel, or gird ourselves to meet the challenge of full employment in our Industry. Full employment in Steel cannot be attained without a shorter workweek or without a reduction in annual hours worked by each employee.”  [108•2  The convention voted in favour of carrying out an active campaign for a 32-hour workweek.

p A broad movement for a shorter workweek was thus under way. Many unions were now making concrete proposals with respect to hours of work and were expressing their readiness to fight for their implementation. Under these circumstances, the AFL-CIO Executive Council adopted a resolution on August 13, 1962, declaring the struggle for a 35-hour workweek to be the primary task of labour unions and calling for a national movement to achieve this goal.  [108•3 

p A statement adopted at that session of the AFL-CIO Executive Council read, in part: "The time has come for a basic change in the fundamental terms of employment in the 109 United States. One certain answer to the problem is to spread the work by reducing the hours each worker devotes to his job, measured either by the week or the year, while maintaining his total earnings. A shorter work period without a reduction in take home pay is the answer America needs; an answer that is more urgent since alternative solutions have been shelved. We intend to achieve that goal.... We intend to proceed simultaneously along two paths—to win both a statutory shorter workweek and a contractual shorter workweek—-We intend to achieve changes in the Fair Labour Standards Act to provide penalty pay of double time for all hours worked over 35....”  [109•1 

p The American press called the AFL-CIO statement of August 13, 1962, a "vote of no-confidence" in the ability of the Kennedy Administration to solve the problem of unemployment. At its Fifth Convention in the autumn of 1963, the AFL-CIO reaffirmed its intention to launch a national campaign for a shorter workweek.

p However, despite repeated assurances of their firm resolve to begin the struggle, the Rightist leaders in the American labour movement still failed to take any decisive action to break down monopoly and government opposition. Even with this break with the Kennedy Administration, wrote progressive American economist, Joseph M. Budish, the AFLCIO leadership was clearly incapable of freeing itself from a deep-rooted, antiquated and fruitless orientation, from the obsolete methods and organisational forms of its activity.

p Union officials actually let this important campaign take its own course. Thus, labour waged an unco-ordinated struggle for shorter work periods and full employment, working primarily toward inclusion of various guarantees in individual contracts. Some unions—the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union of the West Coast, the typographical, the garment workers’, the New York electricians’ unions and others—won a shorter workweek, but in many branches of the economy, especially in those with the greatest number of workers, the monopolies, with government support, flatly rejected all demands for shorter work periods.

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p Despite the conciliatory stance of top AFL-CIO officials and passive leadership in many unions, rank-and-file union members themselves began to come out more and more actively and persistently with demands for a reduced workweek. At a UAW Convention in May 1966, for example, this demand was included in the collective bargaining programme for 1967, but only under heavy pressure from delegates representing many of the union locals.  [110•1 

p In the struggle of the US working class in the present period another important condition for ensuring employment and reducing exploitation is satisfaction of union demands to expand their rights in establishing "work rules”, output standards, control over intensification of labour processes, etc. Many big conflicts in recent years revolved precisely around such problems.

p For example, the hard fight waged for almost five years by the railway workers’ unions was aimed primarily against plans by the railroad companies to change the "work rules" that had existed before then and to reduce the number of workers in train crews, which entailed mass layoffs of firemen and other workers.

p A big and hard-fought strike by East Coast dock workers in early 1965 was also a union effort to prevent employers from reducing the size of work crews. Many more examples of this kind of working class action could be cited.

The policy pursued by the monopolies and the US Government in opposing the major demands of the working class— for more jobs, higher wages, a shorter workweek, better working conditions, etc.—has inevitably led to a further intensification of the class struggle. In the course of their struggle for their vital interests the great masses of rank- andfile union members are acquiring an ever greater understanding of the urgent necessity for greater unity in labour’s ranks, and at the same time are giving notice to conciliationminded union officials who try to divert the growing class struggle into channels that pose no danger to the ruling circles.