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p The mid-1950s were marked by a deepening of the general crisis of capitalism, which had now entered its third stage. A further change in favor of socialism had taken place in the relationship of world forces. The powerful national liberation movements in Asia and Africa had brought about the disintegration of the colonial system of imperialism. Its internal antagonisms were heightened, particularly in the relations between the monopolies and the masses of working people. The reactionary essence of state-monopoly capitalism had become more pronounced. This was manifested in “the merging of the forces of the monopolies with the power of the state in a single mechanism of struggle against the world of socialism, against the working class and the general democratic movement of the masses".  [314•1  The American monopoly bourgeoisie took upon itself the mission of suppressing the national liberation movement of the colonial and dependent peoples.

p During these years the militaristic character of the American economy became more and more evident. As the economy was militarized the role of state investments in it grew, development in different areas of production became increasingly disproportionate, and mass unemployment remained. The monopolies’ encroachment on the vital rights of the working people was intensified, and the interference of the bourgeois state in labor relations increased.

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p In these circumstances, the intensity of the class struggle continued to mount as organized workers waged stubborn strike battles to protect their vital interests. During this period, the United States ranked first in the world in the number of strikes. The Negro proletariat became increasingly active in both the economic and civil rights spheres. The general upsurge of national liberation movements throughout the world had a tremendous impact on the struggle of the American Negroes.

p At the same time, for capitalist and socialist countries alike, the mid-twentieth century was marked by the beginning of the scientific and technological revolution. Scientific discoveries and technological advances spurred the development of industrial production and had a definite influence on socioeconomic processes. New industries, such as the atomic, electronic, missile, and synthetic materials production, came into being and made rapid progress.

p The classics of Marxism-Leninism had recognized the possibility that the means of production would develop rapidly under capitalism. ’Karl Marx underlined the revolutionary character of the technical basis of industry. He wrote in Capital: “Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary....By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour-process.”  [315•1 

p Lenin regarded competition under capitalism as a factor that stimulated its development. “Capitalism,” he wrote, “cannot be at a standstill for a single moment. It must forever be moving forward. Competition, which is keenest in a period of crisis... calls for the invention of an increasing number of new devices to reduce the cost of production."  [315•2 

p At the same time, the founders of Marxism-Leninism also revealed the deep-going contradictions inherent in capitalism which cause the economy and its various branches to develop 316 unevenly, going through periods of upsurge, crisis, recession and depression. As a result, technological progress, too, was uneven, now accelerated, now retarded.

p In the 1950s, the scientific and technological revolution in the United States took place in conditions of recurring economic slumps (the recession of 1953-1954, the crisis of 1957-1958) and low rates of industrial growth.

p On the basis of Keynesian theory, American bourgeois economists argued that greater government economic regulation was needed to bring industrial production up. Prof. Philip Wernette of the University of Michigan, in defining the economic role of the state in modern conditions, said that during slumps and recessions the government should spend large sums of money “to organize demand" despite a budget deficit.  [316•1  Otherwise, Wernette warned, crisis could lead to social revolution. Fewest of all to arise were questions concerning the ways in which the government should guarantee a stable market for the monopolies. University of California professor Sherman Maisel wrote: “At one time people feared a lack of suitable channels for public spending....” But soon, an anti-cycle means was found: the arms race. “As long as defense expenditures remain high,” Maisel went on, “the budget can be varied enough to counteract a depression...."  [316•2 

p The American economy was being militarized at an ever increasing pace. In the second half of the 1950s, an average of $42.1 billion a year was spent on defense, as compared with $36 billion in the first half.  [316•3 

p But even so, the industrial production growth rate remained low. In the five years from 1955 to 1959, the official index of industrial production went up 9 points, that is, an average of about 2 per cent per year.  [316•4  The growth rate was affected seriously by the crisis of 1957-1958, which was deeper than the preceding postwar crises. Industrial output fell by 14 per cent, durable goods production by 27 per cent, and steel production 317 by 40 per cent. The upturn that began in 1959 was insignificant and uneven. In October, for example, there was only a 2 per cent growth over 1957.  [317•1  A report of the congressional Joint Economic Committee said that since 1953, each recession was followed by a weaker comeback than before. “Each recovery period has left a higher percentage of the labour force unemployed than before, and a wider gap between the nation’s produciion and its productive capabilities."  [317•2 

p Idle productive capacity stood at 8 per cent in 1955, 22 per cent in 1957, and 25 per cent in I960.  [317•3  Even in periods of upswing the capacity utilization rate never reached 80 per cent. Particularly large reserves of underemployed capacity were found in such leading industries as steel, automobile and aluminum, where it was between 25 and 40 per cent.

p Some industries, however, continued to develop rapidly. Thus, the production of electricity in the 1950s grew an average of more than 10 per cent annually, and in 1959 amounted to 794 billion kwh.  [317•4  New industries connected with militarization of the economy, such as those in the atomic, missile, and electronics fields, advanced even more rapidly. Investments in atomic production in the period 1950-1959 grew from $2.1 billion to $7.3 billion, to bring the total invested to about $50 billion.  [317•5 

p American monopolies connected with the arms race reaped huge profits, with those of the biggest (General Electric, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Boeing and others) going as high as 20 per cent of invested capital.  [317•6 

p A characteristic feature of technological progress in the United States was that the major achievements in science and technology were applied first of all in the defense industry. In conditions of state-monopoly capitalism, the government assumes the greater part of the expenses for research and 318 development, the fruits of which are then reaped by the big monopolies. Research expenditures from 1950 through 1959 increased more than fourfold, reaching $12.4 billion.  [318•1  A whole industry of science was thereby created. In 1953, the government provided 53 per cent of the total money spent on scientific research, with the monopolies contributing 44 per cent; in 1958, the government’s share rose to 63 per cent, and the monopolies’ share dropped to 34 per cent. When it came to the actual utilization of these funds, the picture was different: most of the monopolies engaged in research at the government’s expense. Thus, in 1953, government research institutions spent only 19 per cent of these federal funds, and the monopolies—70 per cent. The figures for 1958 were, respectively, 14 and 76 per cent.  [318•2 

p New technology was installed mainly at enterprises belonging to big companies.

p Automation accelerated the concentration of capital and production. In the chemical industry, for instance, where automation was introduced especially rapidly, 80 per cent of the enterprises employed not more than 100 workers each, and only 2 per cent employed 500 or more workers. But this did not mean that small entrepreneurs predominated in the chemical industry. On the contrary, the eight largest chemical companies held four-fifths of all the assets in the industry. In the automobile industry, the four biggest companies controlled 56 per cent of the production put on the US market in 1947, and 75 per cent in 1955. In 1957, the four major steel companies controlled 57 per cent of the steel market. The concentration of capital increased even more because of mergers of companies and banks.

p In the present chapter we shall deal mainly with the consequences that automation had for the American working class. We shall also examine the impact of the scientific and technological revolution on the workers’ strike struggle and the nature of their demands.

p Modern science and technology bring about changes in the productivity, methods and forms of labor. The application in 319 industry of scientific advances in the fields of electronics, cybernetics and chemistry creates great possibilities for the growth of the productive forces and material wealth.

p However, the results of scientific and technological progress and its social consequences depend above all on the kind of socio-political system it takes place in. While under socialism the achievements of science and technology help to create benefits for the whole people, under capitalism the benefits go to the relatively small group of people who own the means of production.

p A capitalist enterprise is interested in getting maximum production with minimum outlays for wages, i.e., for the purchase of labor power. The introduction of modern machinery facilitates the creation of such conditions. The cost per unit of production is reduced due to higher productivity of labor, fewer workers employed, and intensified exploitation of those remaining on the job. There are fewer workers employed, but they produce more; the profits of the employers grow, while the workers’ share is growing unemployment. Anxiety about the future grows among the workers, the class struggle intensifies, and the movement of protest against the aims pursued by the monopolies and against the conditions under which technological progress is taking place becomes broader. The labor press has noted that the use of new technology in automated production is aimed at having the work pace set entirely by machines.

p Automation under capitalist conditions confronted the working class with a number of complex problems connected with skill ratings, structural changes, the shift of labor power from production to the service sphere, intensified exploitation, and job security.

p Both Congress and the administration set up committees to study the effect of automation on employment in production. In 1955 and 1960, the congressional Joint Economic Committee heard the views of representatives of science, industry and labor on these questions. From the materials published by the committee it can be seen that the spokesmen for the corporations tried to minimize the negative consequences of automation for the workers and to shift the blame for any adverse consequences onto the unions.

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p The president of the NAM, for example, said that all the troubles stemmed from the greed of the unions that made inordinate wage demands and thereby forced employers to speed the introduction of automation and get rid of “redundant" workers. This, in his view, was exactly what happened in the coal industry. To make up for the rapid growth of wages, the mineowners put in new machines, as a result of which a large percentage of the miners were left without jobs. If it were not for the union’s excessive wage demands, he concluded, automation in the coal industry would have been effected more slowly and with fewer adverse consequences for the workers.

p The president of the NAM was expressing the feelings of his associates, the industrial magnates, who said that the corporations would not be in such a hurry to put in new technology if the unions’ wage demands were “moderate”. Otherwise, the workers would be faced with even more serious unemployment. Consequently, even at this early stage, employers were using automation as a weapon with which to pressure the workers and their unions.

p There were divergent views among students of the technological revolution as to its consequences for workers. Some acknowledged that it would inevitably be a constant source of serious difficulties, while others predicted that the difficulties it might cause would be temporary and slight.

p On behalf of labor, high officials of the AFL-CIO and some of the biggest unions gave their views on the matter at congressional committee hearings. They felt that not only the corporations but everyone would gain from a proper use of new technology and, above all, a fair distribution of the benefits it brought.

p But was this possible under capitalism? As automation developed, some of the top labor leaders began to show apprehension about its consequences. Significant in this respect was the evolution of the views of Walter Reuther, vice-president of the AFL-CIO and president of the United Automobile Workers. In December 1955, he told the Joint Economic Committee that he welcomed advances in science and technology and the fact that companies and employers in industry could acquire more efficient machines. In 1960, however, Reuther’s testimony before that same committee 321 sounded somewhat different. Seeing that automation in the automobile industry had already led to unemployment and job insecurity for many workers, he said that the effect of automation on the economy could now be foreseen more clearly. Day after day, he said, the union ran into the problem of workers being replaced by machines. This was no longer an academic question, but a harsh reality that affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of the union’s members. According to the figures Reuther cited, from 1955 to the first quarter of 1960, the number of employees in the automobile industry had been reduced by 6.9 per cent, with a 10 per cent reduction in the number of production workers.

p Also of interest was the testimony of James Carey, then president of the Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, which united workers at such corporations as General Electric and Westinghouse, engaged in the manufacture of modern automation equipment. Appearing before the Joint Economic Committee Carey stated that the introduction of new technology raised innumerable problems for workers. Many worker skills turned out to be obsolete and unneeded. Older workers were knocked out of production and could not find new jobs. Entire worker settlements were being left without jobs because companies were moving their plants to other places.

p In the electrical machinery industry the number of production workers was reduced by 10 per cent from 1953 to 1959, although investment in new plant and equipment had doubled. The General Electric corporation invested about $900 million in new plant and equipment from 1954 to 1959, which resulted only in 43,000 new jobs for researchers and engineers. At the same time, about 50,000 production workers were thrown out of work.

p Testifying before the Joint Economic Committee in 1960 Meany, also, stressed that automation had already dealt a blow to large numbers of unskilled, semiskilled and, to some extent, skilled workers, and that even more serious difficulties could be expected in the next 10 to 20 years.

p The influence of automation on employment is a complex process. It depends on the rate of production growth and the pace at which new technology is introduced. When the rate of 322 industrial development is high, displaced workers find jobs in other areas of production. When the rate of development is slow, however, they swell the ranks of the unemployed. Introducing new technology at a slower pace and the use of semiautomatic devices do not have a noticeable effect on employment.

p Scientific and technological progress changes the organic composition of capital, with the share of the wage fund in it shrinking. Automation accelerates this process, as becomes especially apparent when data on the growth of investment in new construction are compared with employment figures. From 1950 to 1959, investment grew by 57 per cent, and employment by 16 per cent. In 1950, investments amounted to $461 for every worker employed in production. If this ratio had remained unchanged, then in 1959 the employment figure would have reached 70.2 million, but in reality it was 51.9 million.  [322•1  The fact that demand for labor power in industry was falling was obvious.

p Of interest here are the following Bureau of Labor Statistics figures on the number of persons employed in the nonagricultural sectors of the economy (in thousands)  [322•2  (see Table 5). The figures in Column 4 reflect the effect of automation on employment when the rate of industrial development was low (2 to 2.5 per cent per year). In mining, manufacturing, construction and transportation, the number of jobs was reduced by one million, while in trade, services, financial and government establishments, the number of employed went up by 2.4 million.

Between 1959 and 1964, when the annual rate of industrial development grew to 3.5 per cent, employment jumped, as indicated in Column 3. Column 5 testifies to a growth in employment between 1955 and 1964 by 7.5 million persons, most of whom were in trade, the services field and offices. In transportation employment fell, and in production industries it changed qualitatively. Some 414,000 workers were laid off at plants and mines, but the number of specialists, engineers and technicians increased. In the meantime, the rapid growth of 323 labor productivity more than made up for the loss of production workers. In the ten years covered by these figures, the number of workers employed fell, but industrial production went up 35 per cent.  [323•1  In the coal industry, 400,000 miners lost their jobs from 1950 to 1959, but the remaining 200,000 mined almost the same amount of coal. In the chemical industry, the number of workers fell by 13,000 from 1953 to 1960, yet production increased by 80 per cent. And in electrical machinery, worker employment dropped by 80,000 persons, but production output went up 20 per cent.

Table 5 Industry division 1955 1959 1964 Difference Difference 1955- 1955- 1959 1964 1 3 Total Mining Manufacturing Construction Transportation and public utilities Trade Services Finance and insurance Government Production workers (mining and manufacturing) 50,675 51,975 792 676 16,882 16,168 2,802 2,767 4,141 3,902 10,536 11,385 6,274 6,525 2,335 2,425 58.186 +1,300 +7,511 635 -116 -41 17,302 -714 +420 3,106 -35 +304 3,976 -239 -165 12.187 +849 +1,651 8,533 +251 +2,259 2,945 +90 +610 6,914 8,127 9,503 +1,213 +2,589 13,717 13,193 13,303 -524 -414

p As noted earlier, there was a general shift of the labor force toward the trade and services fields and government employment. But automation^spread to these spheres as well.

p A House of Representatives committee set up in 1960 to study the influence of automation on employment found that between 1955 and 1960 computers had abolished 25 per cent of the nation’s office jobs. However, this did not yet have an effect on the employment figures, for the services field was 324 expanding so rapidly that it was able to absorb not only those who had lost their jobs, but also young workers just entering the labor market.

p Scientific and technological progress brought about changes in the occupational composition of the working class. Many traditional trades found no application in automated enterprises. At the same time, new trades arose which required special training and a high educational level. The Department of Labor noted in 1956 the appearance of 375 new job categories. Automation generated a rapid growth in staffs of engineers and technicians and noticeably reduced the need for unskilled and semiskilled workers.

Table 6 gives an idea of the character of the structural changes in the working class due to automation. American statistics divide wage earners into two basic groups: blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. The first are industrial production workers, the second, engineers, technicians, managers and office employees (in millions)  [324•1 :

Table 6 1955 1964 Difference Blue-collar workers, including: skilled workers, foremen semiskilled workers unskilled workers White-collar workers, including: engineers, technicians administrators, managers and proprietors* office employees employees in trade 24.7 25.5 + 3.2 + 8.5 + 0.7 -2.7 + 31.2 8.2 12.8 3.7 23.7 5.6 6.0 8.1 4.0 8.9 12.9 3.6 31.1 8.5 +52.0 7.4 10.7 4.5 + 23.3 + 32.1 + 12.5

p * The statistics include in the category of wage earners those proprietors win work in the administrative apparatus of their companies.

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p The changes in the first group in the table are characterized by a very small increase of production workers, which came about primarily through a certain growth in skilled manpower. The number of semiskilled workers remained virtually unchanged in the 10 years (although it fell by more than one million in the crisis years of 1958-1961). Semiskilled workers comprised the largest section of American working people. Mass conveyor-line production required simple, repetitious movements and thereby tended to produce a category of workers with narrow skill profiles. In automated enterprises they could only perform supplementary operations, and retraining was made difficult because of their inadequate level of education. The proportion of low-skill workers steadily declined (in 1940 they comprised one-fifth of all workers, while in 1964 only one-seventh).  [325•1 

p The ones affected most by the falling demand for unskilled labor were Negro and poor white workers who could not raise their qualifications because of their social status.

p The number of highly skilled workers grew insignificantly. It would seem that automated enterprises should have had a great need for skilled personnel. Yet this category grew slowly. Why? In the first place, some trades became obsolete and could not be used at automated enterprises, and employers’ expenditures on training people for the new ones were rather limited. In the second place, and this was the main reason, the expected leap forward in retraining workers for new skills connected with automation had not yet occurred. Some economists felt that the new jobs often demanded even less vocational skill and experience than the old ones. According to Prof. Charles C. Killingsworth of Michigan State University, workers needed only a brief training period to meet the new requirements.  [325•2  The Department of Labor agreed, saying that “automation has not resulted in upgrading many jobs. Most workers continue to do work requiring about the same skills as before."  [325•3 

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p Employment of white-collar workers increased 31.2 per cent, primarily due to the growing number of engineers and technicians employed. This was the direct result of automation in production and expanded scientific research. The growing demand for office workers was associated largely with an increase in auditing’and accounting in industrial and financial corporations.

p Some bourgeois economists and sociologists use the structural changes taking place in manpower as an argument in an attempt to refute the Marxist teaching on classes. As sociologist Vance Packard indicated, “some observers have enthusiastically seen this growth of white-collars as evidence of a great upthrust of ‘working’ class people into the ‘middle’ class".  [326•1  As a result of this alleged transformation the theory of class struggle is supposedly inapplicable to America.

p The theory of an all-embracing “middle class" of almost all Americans is devoid of any scientific sense, and serious American scholars do not subscribe to it. Its obvious propaganda purpose is to smooth over and obfuscate the sharp social contrasts in American society.

p The growth of white-collar employment does not by any means indicate that American working people are climbing up the social ladder in either the material or vocational sense. According to Department of Labor data, the salaries of office employees and sales clerks in 1957 were 30 to 50 per cent lower than the earnings of workers in the steel, coal, automobile and other leading industries. Therefore, when a worker moved from the production sphere to an office job there was no improvement in his standard of living; on the contrary, the change often entailed material losses.

p Within the broad and complex white-collar category there is a deepening differentiation between the high-paid administrative personnel in corporations and banks, a certain part of the specialists in science, technology and culture, and people in the professions, on the one hand, and the mass of office workers and technicians, on the other.

p The boundary between these groups runs mainly along the 327 line of their class affiliation, which is determined by socialeconomic conditions. Whereas the uppermost sections of the white collars are drawn toward the capitalist class, the technicians and office workers tend to stand closer to the working class in terms of their place and role in production, retaining, however, many differences in ideology, politics, traditions, etc.

p The scientific and technological revolution has increased the tendency toward a levelling of the economic status of different groups of wage earners. Automation tends to wipe out the distinction between skilled and unskilled work, dissolving both in the general flow of work done by machines.

p Technological progress and changes in the character of employment set a number of new tasks before the trade unions. Production workers comprised the basic mass of the nation’s union members, but their proportion in the nation’s total labor force was falling, while white-collar workers, whose numbers were growing, were only marginally organized into unions. In 1958, unionization was highest in the manufacturing industry. There, two-thirds of all the production workers and only 16 per cent of the office workers belonged to unions. In trade, the services field, communications and transportation, only 12 per cent of the workers were unionized, and among the engineers and technicians, the figure was only 10 per cent.  [327•1 

p Automation, therefore, dictated the need to organize a large section of the working people. Vice-president of the United Automobile Workers Leonard Woodcock stated at a convention in 1958 that if the engineers, technicians and office employees were not organized, the unions would soon lose their effective power.

p Little was being done to organize women into unions, although employment among them in the 1950s was growing twice as fast as among men. From 1950 through 1959, the number of men in nonagricultural production increased by 2.3 million, compared with an increase of 4.5 million women. In 1959, there were 20.9 million working women, comprising 328 35 per cent of all those employed outside of agriculture.  [328•1  Yet only 15 per cent of the working women belonged to unions while among men the percentage was twice as high.  [328•2 

p Some labor figures foresaw considerable difficulties in organizing the young people who were annually augmenting the ranks of wage earners. They felt that young workers lacked due respect for the trade unions, since they had not known the crisis and depression of the 1930s, nor the hardships of unemployment, severe working conditions, the tyranny of plant and shop administrations, and had not participated in the class struggle of those stormy years. As a result they knew little of what the older generation had gone through and could not properly evaluate the achievements of the unions, taking them for granted, not something fought for and won.

p The merger of the AFL and CIO opened up new opportunities for solving many urgent problems of the labor movement. However, these opportunities were not fully realized due to the conciliatory policy of the union leadership. The AFL-CIO convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in December 1957, was typical in many respects. The profile of the new organization became clearer, as did the contradictions between the more active industrial unions of the CIO and the more inert craft unions still existing in the AFL. The policy that Meany and his associates adhered to seemed too reactionary to the AFL-CIO leaders who came from the industrial unions.

p Addressing the convention, Meany touched on the trade union movement only in passing. He dwelt more on the state of the nation’s military preparedness than on the urgent tasks of the labor movement. Speaking in ominous tones about the growing might of the Soviet Union, its successes in space, and “communist expansion”, Meany called on workers to make sacrifices for the sake of the arms race.

p But the delegates were worried about other problems. The loud assurances given by the AFL-CIO leadership at the merger convention in 1955 that a broad campaign would be 329 launched to organize the unorganized turned out to be an empty promise. The Fortune magazine wrote in June 1956: “In the past ten years new organizing has tapered off almost completely.” The mass of workers in the chemical, oil, paper and other industries, the magazine noted further, were still unorganized. Only 180,000 of the 1.3 million workers in the oil industry belonged to AFL-CIO unions; just as many belonged to small management-controlled company unions. There were no unions at all at the Du Pont chemical enterprises. Conditions were difficult for the trade unions in the textile industry as well, where there was an intensive relocation of mills from northern to southern states. The mill owners did everything possible to rid themselves of the unions, and in the new locations stubbornly fought every effort to organize the workers.  [329•1 

p The AFL-CIO executive council’s report at the 1957 convention noted that “the organizing climate has worsened since the merger in December 1955".  [329•2  Anti-union forces headed by the NAM and the US Chamber of Commerce used the AFL-CIO merger as a pretext to step up their campaigns of opposition to trade union concepts. But the root of the evil was not so much the activity of anti-union forces as the passiveness of the federation’s leadership.

p As for organizing white-collar workers, the trade union leaders had no doubt that there were good possibilities for organizing office and other employees. Engineers and technicians, however, were another matter. Serious difficulties arose in organizing them into unions. Many trade union figures shared the opinion of Joseph Beirne, an AFL-CIO vicepresident and president of the large Communications Association of America, who felt that it was hard to talk to engineers and technicians because they considered themselves in many ways above the mass of organized workers: with their good education, they tended to be haughty and turned up their noses at those who fought for the destinies of the less fortunate 330 and more poorly dressed. Today, he said, they were not suitable prospects for the trade union movement.

p This negative conclusion was addressed to the past rather than the present, much less to the future. As scientific and technical personnel in industry move further and further away from administrative functions, they also lose many of their privileges and are subjected to increasing exploitation.

p The AFL-CIO leadership headed by Meany displayed exceptional energy and haste in expelling a number of large unions from the federation. The drive was conducted under the slogan, “Let’s clean our house of corruption and other abuses”. The fate of the labor movement depended on this, the convention delegates were told.

p What prompted the leadership to instigate a purge? In early 1957, Congress appointed a Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, headed by Senator John McClellan (Dem., Arkansas), to investigate corruption in labor and management. In actual fact reaction was out to discredit the trade unions in the eyes of the public to prepare the ground for a new anti-union law. Nonetheless, the federation’s leadership bent over backwards to help the Senator. An executive council report said: “We believe that Congress, in the interest of enacting corrective legislation, if the same be deemed and found necessary, has the right, through proper committees, to investigate corruption wherever it exists, whether in labor, industry or anywhere else."  [330•1 

p To the dismay of the AFL-CIO leaders, however, Congress was interested only in the unions. The McClellan Committee focussed on the giant teamsters’ union, which had almost 1.5 million in its ranks. At first glance this seemed an unusual choice. The union’s former president, Dave Beck, a frequent guest at the White House and adviser to President Eisenhower, by all standards of conciliatory politics could be considered a completely loyal labor leader: dishonest, but boundlessly devoted to the interests of his masters. But Dave Beck was beside the point, for he had already been removed from the union presidency for corruption.

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p The point is that the union was an influential force in the struggle against the employers. This is easy to understand, considering the tremendous role truck transportation plays in the American economy. Many unions achieved rapid successes in their strike struggle when the teamsters came to their aid. The McClellan Committee’s tasks consisted in undermining this union on the pretext of fighting corruption. For its part, the AFL-CIO leadership did not meditate long over the fate of the teamsters’ union.

p On May 20, 1957, the executive council expelled the union from the AFL-CIO, and the federation’s convention was asked to approve this decision. Two other unions met the same fate—the Bakery Workers and the Laundry Workers.

p With the expulsion of these unions the federation lost 1.7 million members, or more than 10 per cent of its total membership. Besides this, a so-called ethical practices code, as a means of wiping out corruption in the unions, was proposed to the convention. But the code provided, among other things, for a campaign against progressive elements. Membership in or cooperation with the Communist Party were declared violations of ethical standards and grounds for being barred from any official union post,  [331•1  The trade union leaders were still putting an equal sign between corruption and Communist Party membership, although they knew full well what an uncompromising struggle the Communists were waging against this evil in the unions.

p Corruption in American trade unions was generated by the conciliatory activity of those union leaders who, behind the backs of workers, made all kinds of illegal deals with employers, looking upon their unions as a private business, and flagrantly misappropriated union funds.

p According to official American statistics, by the beginning of the 1960s unemployment in the USA had reached its highest point in the postwar period. The figure for 1959-1961 was 4,183,000 persons, or 5.9 per cent of the economically active population.

p The question of expelling the teamsters took up a large part 332 of the time at the AFL-CIO convention in 1957, pushing many important issues into the background. Essentially without debate, the convention passed a non-committal resolution on automation, although a number of unions had proposed concrete actions. The Transport Workers Union of America, for example, submitted a resolution which said that automation on the railroads was no longer a question of the future, with its hopes and fears. For railroad workers automation meant mass layoffs, with a loss of everything that had been gained earlier. The union considered it necessary that the AFL-CIO launch a struggle for a 30-hour workweek as the only answer to automation. The resolution passed by the convention acknowledged that new machines and production methods made it possible to improve living conditions and reduce work hours, but it gave no indication of how this could be realized.

p The leadership of the federation obviously had neither a program nor even a clear approach to the problems posed by automation. It was standing by idly, taking a wait-and-see attitude, never binding itself by making concrete recommendations, to say nothing of commitments. This position complicated matters for the unions, leaving them on their own to make the difficult choice of which way to fight in the new circumstances. By that time, several approaches toward the problems of automation had been developed in union practice.

p The United Mine Workers, for example, was confronted with the alternative of either fighting to preserve the labor force while agreeing to a reduction in wages, or accepting the companies’ conditions, getting, in return, high wage rates and social security for those who remain in the mines. The union leadership, headed by Lewis, chose the second route. Lewis said: “The UMW holds that labor is entitled to a participation in the increased productivity due to mechanization. We decided the question of displacement of workers by mechanization years ago. We decided it is better to have a half million men working in the industry at good wages and high standards of living than it is to have a million working in the industry in poverty and degradation.”   [332•1  What happened to those who lost their jobs was no longer the union’s concern.

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p The results of this policy were felt only too soon. Between 1950, when the contract was signed, and 1957, 44 per cent of the miners lost their jobs, while coal extraction dropped by only 8 per cent. By 1962, only one-third of the miners were working, while production held at approximately the same level. In a matter of fifteen years, production per man-day had leaped from 6.5 tons to 15.3 tons.  [333•1 

p Trade union leaders sought compromise solutions that would overlook the demand for a shorter workweek. In 1955, the United Auto Workers set forth a program for a guaranteed annual wage as a means of protecting workers from the consequences of automation. The companies categorically rejected it. In the course of negotiations, however, another plan took shape—one to which Ford and other companies agreed. It was a plan for supplementary unemployment benefits to be paid by the employer for a period of 26 weeks. They were supplementary in the sense that they were in addition to those paid under state unemployment compensation programs. The company was to set up a special fund for this purpose, allocating 5 to 7 cents for every man-hour worked. Although this plan had nothing in common with a guaranteed annual wage, the new benefits did relieve the situation for the unemployed. The UAW had unquestionably scored an important advance. The demand for supplementary unemployment benefits was subsequently incorporated into the negotiating packages of many other unions.

The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, headed as before by Harry Bridges, took a different approach. The problems stemming from the automation of loading and unloading operations in the ports were just as serious as in the coal, automobile and other industries. In 1957, the question of what attitude to take to the introduction of new technology—to accept or reject it—was widely discussed in the union’s locals. It was unanimously decided that the time had come for the union to obtain a fair share of the benefits of technological progress for its membership.

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p With an eye to this, the union began what turned out to be two years of negotiations with the shipowners. The main thing the union was after was to keep the work force intact (reduction could come about only by natural causes such as death, retirement, disability). A one-year contract was concluded on these terms in 1959. The union regarded it as experimental, putting the principle upon which it was based to a practical test. A $1.5-million fund established by the shipowners guaranteed the union dockers an average wage when there was no work.

p The contract proved to be effective and became the basis for a five-and-a-half-year contract, signed at the end of 1960, under which the shipowners were to put $5 million into the fund for each year of its duration. The fund was divided into two parts: one provided unemployed dock workers with an average wage, and the other provided for payments of $220 a month for three years to workers who, having at least 25 years in the industry, chose to retire at 62 instead of 65 years of age.  [334•1 

p The ILWU achieved more under conditions of automation than any other union. But, in Bridges’ opinion, the contract was only a temporary solution, since automation posed such problems as demanded the efforts of the entire working class. Somewhere or other in America one is always bound to see people carrying signs and posters saying: “On Strike!" They walk silently back and forth outside the gates of vacated factories or form a solid line blocking the way to strikebreakers. Workers relieving one another stand in picket lines round the clock, in any weather, in any season.

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p Among those who manned picket lines in the second half of the 1950s were steelworkers, auto workers, miners, garment workers, dock workers and seamen. In November and December 1958, three of the five major airlines (Trans World, Eastern, and American) were idle due to a strike of pilots and mechanics. More than a third of the nation’s commercial flights had to be cancelled. The automobile industry saw a strike of engineers and technicians against the Chrysler Corporation. For two weeks in December 1958, the residents of New York were without newspapers due to a strike by newspaper delivery men. Strikes took place in the cement, rubber, glass and construction industries. There were strikes at defense plants, and workers picketed the missile bases at Cape Canaveral.

The following figures give a picture of the strike movement in the United States from 1955 to 1959  [335•1 :

Work stoppages Workers involved (in thousands) Man-days idle (in millions) 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 4,320 3,825 3,673 3,694 3,708 2,650 1,900 1,390 2,060 1,880 28.2 33.1 16.5 23.9 69.0

p Compared with the first half of the 1950s, there was a drop in the number of work stoppages and workers involved. Such ups and downs in the strike movement are connected with the specific economic and political conditions in the country at any given time.

p In the years indicated above, the rate of industrial growth had dropped to almost half of what it was in the early 1950s, and unemployment had risen sharply. The crisis of 1957-1958 proved to be the most serious in the postwar period As the above figures show, the low point in the number of work stoppages came in 1957, with a slight increase in the following two years.

p While strikes took place in many industries, the struggle was 336 particularly sharp in the steel, auto, ore-mining, and transportation industries.

p The collective bargaining agreement in the steel industry was due to expire in June 1956. High on the list of worker demands was the establishment of a company-financed fund for the payment of supplementary unemployment benefits for a maximum of 52 weeks. Other demands were for higher wages and larger pensions, and a two-year contract. The corporations rejected these proposals, insisting on a five-year contract on previous terms. All of the union’s attempts to continue negotiations were rejected. The companies refused to make any concessions.

p On July 1, a total of 650,000 steelworkers throughout the country walked off the job. They did not have to set up picket lines to prevent strikebreaking, because the companies decided to stop production and shut down the mills. However, pickets were posted in keeping with tradition. There were no incidents. The men would peacefully play baseball, and the plant guards cheerfully tossed back the ball whenever it was hit over the fence. But these idyllic scenes outside the mills were accompanied by sharp clashes in the propaganda field, as every means of pressure was brought to bear on the strikers through the radio, television and newspapers.

p Three weeks later, the companies resumed negotiations, and on July 27 signed a three-year contract which provided for an annual wage increase of 7 cents an hour, a total of 21 cents, and a fund for supplementary unemployment benefits. The SUB fund was to be financed by employer contributions amounting to 5 cents per worker per hour worked. The duration of the benefits was 52 weeks. An unemployed worker would receive $25 a week in addition to his state unemployment compensation benefits, which together comprised 65 per cent of his wage. When the state benefits expired, the company benefits would go to $53 a week for a worker with three dependents. If the amount of money remaining in the fund fell to 50 per cent of the amount put in at the time it was established, then benefits would be cut in half, and would cease altogether when only 10 per cent remained.

p The steelworkers did better than the UAW, where supplementary benefits were paid for only 26 weeks.

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p The struggle of the automobile workers took place during the crisis of 1958. The union’s convention in April 1957 had passed a resolution for the reduction of the workweek without a cut in wages, the number one demand in negotiations. But at the January 1958 convention, Walter Reuther dismissed this proposal as unrealistic. What was advanced instead was a minimum program for all companies, and a maximum program for the most flourishing.

p The minimum program called for raising wages, extending supplementary unemployment benefits to 52 weeks, and severance pay to workers who lost their jobs due to plant relocation.

p The maximum program provided for the division of corporate superprofits into three shares: one to the stockholders, another to the workers, and the third to the consumers (in the form of lower prices). Reuther proposed this obviously Utopian plan instead of the demand to reduce the workweek, which brought forth objections at the convention.

p With this attempt to encroach upon the profits of the monopolies, Reuther evoked the ire of not only the automobile kings, but also some political figures. Senator Goldwater, whom Reuther had described to the convention as political fanatic No. 1 and a bitter foe of labor, made a hasty trip to Detroit and in a public speech violently denounced Reuther’s “socialistic” program, saying that its division-of-profits demand posed a mortal danger to America.

p Negotiations over a new contract came to a deadlock. The automobile companies would not hear of any division of profits and in general refused to propose anything to the union except extension of the old contract for another two years. With a stock of some 1,000,000 unsold cars on their hands, the companies had no fear of a strike. In the meantime, the old contract expired. On May 29, General Motors announced non-extension of the contract; Ford and Chrysler did the same on June 1. The workers remained with no contract, their situation vulnerable.

p According to the established tradition of “No Contract, No Work”, a strike was inevitable. But the union leadership decided otherwise: in a letter to the membership, Reuther said that in view of the recession the union would not follow the 338 “No Contract, No Work" policy. A strike, in his view, would be unwise; the workers would only fall into the employers’ trap. He said that the workers should stay on the job, even without a contract, until satisfactory results were achieved in negotiations.

p The companies took advantage of the conciliatory position of the union leadership. A number of enterprises began to reduce wage rates and increase work loads. Their bookkeeping departments everywhere stopped withholding union dues from the pay of union members, as they had done previously under the contract. In taking this action, the i inployers were pursuing far-reaching aims. The union newspaper explained: “The Ford Motor Co. is under the false impression that terminating the check-off of Union dues will weaken our Union. The Company is hopeful that only a few of our members will pay their Union dues voluntarily and thereby give the Company an argument in contract negotiations that the members of the Union are not in support of their leaders."  [338•1  But the company’s tactic failed, for the workers stood in line for hours, if need be, to pay their union dues.

p The corporations tried other ways, too, to undermine the union. General Motors and Ford, for example, sent letters out to all their employees in an effort to convince them that everything they had they owed not to the union but to the company, which showed “fatherly” concern for their welfare without any union interference. They were hoping that with unemployment being a serious problem they could persuade the workers to support an extension of the old contract. But these attempts failed, too.

p The union locals did not abide by the central leadership’s no-strike decision. On June 4, 1958, a strike broke out at one of the General Motors plants in Pittsburgh. Then another broke out at a Chrysler defense plant. This forced Reuther on June 23 to take a poll of the locals. Ninety-two per cent of them came out in favor of striking. The workers did not want to work without a contract.

p A strike against the Ford Motor Company was called on September 17, and 95,000 workers walked off their jobs. Six 339 hours later the vice-president of the company had already signed an agreement with the union. The workers received a wage raise amounting to 2.5 per cent per year; supplementary unemployment benefits were extended from 26 to 39 weeks; and a lump sum severance pay (with a $ 1,200 maximum) was established for workers laid off due to plant relocation.

p General Motors refused to sign a contract on these terms. A strike of 300,000 workers was called on October 2, and on October 3 the contract was signed. One day of decisive strike action accomplished what five months of fruitless negotiations and work without a contract could not.

p In 1959, public attention was drawn to strikes of ore miners and steelworkers. The International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, as we know, was expelled from the CIO in 1950, and had been persecuted ever since. The AFL-CIO leadership vainly sought to lure workers in that industry into other unions. Now the union’s contract with the copper and zinc monopolies—Anaconda, Kennecott, Phelps Dodge, American Brass Company and others—was due to expire on July 30, 1959. In March, the union met for its 54th convention to decide on the terms of the new contract. Its newspaper had made a survey to find out what demands the workers considered paramount. Here are some of the responses it received. James Edwards from Georgia said: “Higher wages, of course, come first. They are needed and justified. Then to take care of unemployment and layoffs we need a shorter workweek without any loss in pay.” Armand Navarro (California): “Job security. We’ve got to show the companies ... that we’re ready to fight and beat back attacks against our jobs and contract conditions.” Floyd Loewe (Montana): “Due to the decline in markets, speed-up and increased mechanization replacing men—all causing layoffs and unemployment especially in our industry—I think job security should be a major issue in this year’s bargaining.” John Pawinski (Buffalo, New York): “First of all we should put up a real fight for the shorter workweek without loss in pay to get more of our laid-off members back in the job.”   [339•1 

p Taking the views of the membership into account, the 340 convention adopted a bargaining program which provided for wage increases; supplementary unemployment benefits amounting to 80 per cent of the wage for 52 weeks; retention by workers of all privileges, seniority and others, upon relocation of enterprises; reduction of the workweek to 32 hours; the right of workers to refuse overtime work; and a contract of not more than two years’ duration, with the right to review the terms after one year.

p The companies turned thumbs down on the union’s demands and declined to make any counterproposals. John Clark, the union president, said: “Our efforts to confine the 1959 bargaining struggle to the negotiating table have been treated with something akin to scorn. It is apparent to me that some of the companies actually are trying to provoke a strike.”   [340•1  At the same time, the companies waged an active propaganda campaign against the union, hoping to split its ranks. The attempt failed. On August 10, 35,000 workers in the mines and mills went on strike. The employers immediately stepped up their anti-union activity. Using strikebreakers, they tried to instigate a back-to-work movement on the old contract terms. In the meantime, fourteen of the union’s leaders were being persecuted by the Department of Justice: they were charged with conspiracy to conceal that they were Communists.

p Despite the repression, baiting and provocations, the union acted energetically and decisively. Its leaders went out among the striking workers. John Clark went from place to place, stood in the picket lines with the workers, and shared all the hardships connected with the struggle.

p The wives of the workers also took an active part in the fight as they organized field kitchens, rest places, barber shops and clothing and shoe repair services for the pickets. The president of the union local at the Magna Copper enterprises had this to say: “The women were terrific. They did a magnificent job bringing new spirit to our members in this fight for the life of our union at Magna Copper. There is no way for us to fully show them our thanks and appreciation."  [340•2 

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p It was a long strike, and the union’s funds were dwindling. On November 10, the union asked the AFL-CIO for help. Meany turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the striking workers. But help did come from the ILWU, the United Electrical Workers, and some AFL-CIO locals. In particular, the strikers were supported by the hotel and restaurant workers in Cincinnati, the auto workers in Cleveland and Chicago, steelworkers in Buffalo, the slaughterhouse workers in Chicago, and dozens of other union locals.  [341•1 

p The union paper reported on the “hundreds of defense and strike contributions that have been pouring into the International Mine-Mill office in Denver during the last few weeks from ordinary people in almost every state in the nation. They are from people we never heard of—doctors, lawyers, pensioners, workers, teachers, etc.... Dollars, two dollars, five dollars, ten dollars ... in coins, bills, money orders and checks; plain in an envelope, many with scrawled messages hard to decipher, almost every one with regret that ’I can’t afford more’...."  [341•2 

p The trial of the union leaders began in October and went on simultaneously with the strike. After lengthy court sessions, the union leaders would again man the picket lines and speak at meetings, keeping up the spirit of the workers.

p This unequal struggle, full of deprivations for the strikers went on for six months. Solidarity and unity gave the union the strength needed to see the fight through to a successful end. The companies finally made concessions, and on February 11, 1960, the strike ended with the signing of a two-year contract. It provided for a 22.5-cent-an-hour wage increase, $2,000 worth of life insurance at company expense, and a benefit of $2,500 in event of the work-related death or disablement of a breadwinner. All these were important points for the men working under the hard and dangerous conditions in the mines and mills, where the companies grudged the money for safety measures. The union failed to get supplementary unemployment benefits, and the companies also categorically refused to reduce the workweek without a cut in pay.

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p During all this time, the trial of the union’s leaders was still in progress. It finally ended in March. Five of the defendants, including the union’s secretary-treasurer, Irving Dichter, were sentenced to three years in prison, with a fine of $2,000 each; the others received shorter terms. It was all part of the effort by the corporations, in alliance with the government and the . AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy, to undermine this progressive union and leave it leaderless.

p The strike in the steel industry was the first mass strike of that period in which the problems of automation were uppermost. The question being decided was: what real possibilities did the unions have to influence the course of technological progress and bring about effective job-security measures? As for the corporations, they wanted an absolutely free hand in applying new technology, regardless of its consequences for the workers.

p The union was in a difficult situation at the time, with its funds steadily drained by the payment of benefits to unemployed members. The union paper was later to write: “Nineteen fifty-eight had been a year, not of recession, but of depression for Steelworkers.”  [342•1  Steel mills were operating at only half capacity, creating a huge army of unemployed in the industry.

p Nonetheless, the union showed every sign of growing vigor. This was true especially after an opposition had emerged against the conciliatory policy of the union’s president, David McDonald. It first became evident in February 1957, at the time of elections of officers, when the candidacy of Donald Rarick, a blast furnace operator, was advanced against McDonald for president. Despite attempts to suppress the opposition, its slogan calling for the return of the union to the workers found wide support among the rank and file, and Rarick received more than 30 per cent of the votes. This jolted the leadership out of its complacency and spurred it to more vigorous action.

p The negotiations over a new contract that began in May soon became deadlocked. Executive Vice-President of United States Steel Conrad Cooper demanded on behalf of the steel corporations that the union agree to cardinal changes in the 343 contract clauses pertaining to work rules as a prior condition for further negotiation on the union’s demands. This became the main issue because under the contract concluded back in 1947, the union was given the right to take part in controlling certain working conditions, and the monopolies felt that this impeded their initiative for technological progress. The union, in turn, proposed that this issue be referred to a joint committee of the union and the industry for further study during the term of the new contract.

p Cooper maintained that the difficulty with the union’s proposal was that it sought “to treat now with subjects uppermost in the union’s mind ... but to defer to a later date the solution of the companies’ problems, which they regard as an essential stepping-stone to a non-inflationary agreement".  [343•1 

p In a hopeless search for reconciliation with the companies, the union leaders held off calling a strike. They asked the President of the United States to appoint a mediation commission, but the White House turned a deaf ear to their request. A strike of 540,000 Steelworkers became inevitable, and on July 15, 1959 it began. A pamphlet published by the union gave the full story of the causes and course of the strike.  [343•2  One after another the blast furnaces went out and the blooming and rolling mills ground to a halt. The workers set up picket lines, but this time they were not playing baseball as in 1956; it was an entirely different strike. The union paper wrote: “U.S. Steel has now determined to deny its workers even a small share in the giant earnings they helped to create."  [343•3 

p The workers realized that the struggle was not so much for higher wages as for their jobs. Steelworker Jason Kieffer (Minnesota) wrote that what the steel companies wanted to do under the guise of improved “local working conditions" was to provide grounds for further cuts in the work force. “This means the older man is unemployed, can’t work long enough to get a pension,” he said.  [343•4 

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p Every striker personally felt the acuteness and tension of the struggle. The companies’plan was to exhaust the union. They assumed that the workers could not survive a long strike, that privations would force them to return to work. But they did not take into account the determination of the workers. Steelworker Raymond Vince wrote: “We are determined to meet the challenge of the steel industry at all cost.”  [344•1 

p The steel magnates also underestimated labor solidarity. The steelworkers received over $5,000,000 from other unions. Big demonstrations in support of the striking steelworkers were organized in New York and Detroit on September 7. The executive council of the AFL-CIO called on all unions to give all possible aid to the strikers, and passed a resolution which emphasized the militant spirit of the workers. It said: “In full recognition that the steel strike is part of the big business conspiracy, we hereby declare our determination to make the steel strike the struggle of the whole American labor movement and to mobilize our full resources, our collective will and the human solidarity of American workers to win this historic struggle for human justice."  [344•2 

p The executive council asked President Eisenhower to persuade the companies to resume negotiations. Similar calls were also made in Congress. The Democrats did not miss this opportunity to criticize the Republicans for their inaction and to stress the danger of the anti-labor policies of the monopolies. In the House of Representatives, Democratic Congressman Elmer Holland said: “We are witnessing in America today the greatest barrage of anti-union propaganda.... Employers are viciously fighting against legitimate collective bargaining ... resisting organization of their employees.... This massive attack on labor is not new. It actually has been going on for years, but only during the past two years has it reached the unprecedented intensity of today."  [344•3  At the same time, an active anti-labor campaign was developing in Congress, and a new law against the unions was in the making.

p Eisenhower decided to intervene in the dispute. On 345 September 30, he invited US Steel president Roger Blough and union president McDonald to the White House. The company agreed to resume negotiations, but this was followed by a new development. On October 21, in accordance with the TaftHartley Act, a federal court ordered a halt to the strike for 80 days, and on November 7, the Supreme Court upheld the decision. One hundred and sixteen days of tense struggle and deprivations for the workers ended in court repression. Just as the stocks of steel were giving out and the strikers were close to victory, they were forced to return to work.

p The indignation of the workers compelled the union leaders, too, to utter what were for them unpleasant words like “big business conspiracy”, “class war”, etc. McDonald wrote: “Steelworkers will return to work if they are required to do so by law. But the union will not be beaten. The basic issues will remain.”   [345•1 

p In January 1960, the 80-day injunction expired and the steelworkers could again go out on strike. A poll showed that they were ready to do so. The leading corporations figured that if the strike were renewed, Congress would inevitably intervene, and new repressive actions would be taken against the union. Their hopes, however, were not justified. The head of the Kaiser Steel Corporation, Edgar Kaiser, notified the other steel companies that he was beginning negotiations with the union to avoid losing a profitable 200-million-dollar order.

p The proposal to negotiate with the union was put to a vote. Nine companies, including Republic Steel and Armco Steel, supported Kaiser. United States Steel and Bethlehem Steel were left in the minority. In November, Kaiser signed a contract with the union, effective to July 30, 1961, which served as a way out of the impasse for all the other companies.

p The workers received a wage raise of 9 cents an hour in 1960, and as much in 1961. A sliding scale adjustment of wages was retained (if prices rose, workers could receive up to three-cent-an-hour increase in wages per year). And supplementary unemployment benefits were retained to October 31, 1961. The issue of working conditions was referred to a special committee. The contract noted: “The parties shall establish a 346 joint committee to study problems resulting from automation and technological change and local working conditions....”  [346•1 

p This period also saw the dock workers waging a strike struggle under extremely difficult conditions. Every time they undertook a strike action, it was blocked by court injunction. On October 16, 1955, for example, a dock workers’ strike paralyzed all Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico ports. The West Coast longshoremen staged a one-day work stoppage as a sign of solidarity. The government invoked the Taft-Hartley Act, and on the ninth day the strike was terminated. But 80 days later, on February 12, 1956, the East Coast strike was resumed. The shipowners were forced to make concessions. They agreed to increase wages and set up a welfare fund; however, the union’s important demand for job security measures remained unsatisfied.

p When the contract expired on October 1, 1959, the East Coast dock workers again struck. History repeated itself. On the eighth day, a Taft-Hartley injunction forced them to terminate the strike. Thus, using the anti-labor law, the government made a fiction of the workers’ right to defend their vital interests by means of a strike.

p The strike movement in the second half of the 1950s was distinguished by the fact that it was affected by the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution. This manifested itself above all in the sharp struggle by industrial workers and other groups of wage earners for job security and against the increasing displacement of “redundant” workers.

p While employers considered wage demands to be a matter for customary bargaining with the unions, they felt that the job-security demands went beyond this framework. They regarded them as intolerable interference by the unions in the management of production, tantamount to an encroachment on private property.

p The employers were unwilling to make concessions on questions of employment. The workers won some improvements in economic conditions, but neither the steelworkers as a result of tense struggle, nor the longshoremen, whose strikes 347 the government repeatedly suppressed by repressive actions, nor any other unions were able to win employment guarantees.

p All this resulted in tougher and longer strikes.

Wages continued to rise in the second half of the 1950s, but at a slower rate than in the first half. Thus, average weekly earnings in the manufacturing industries showed an increase of 29.7 per cent from 1950 to 1955, but went up only 15.3 per cent between 1955 and 1959.  [347•1  This difference was even more noticeable in terms of real wages, which increased 11.3 per cent in the first half of the decade, but only 4.5 per cent in the second. The absolute figures given here represent the growth of weekly wages in the manufacturing industry for a worker with three dependents in the 1950s (in dollars)  [347•2 :

1950 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 67.26 74.80 76.29 75.85 74.71 78.23

p The growth of real wages was slowed down during the 1957-1958 crisis, when, on the one hand, nominal wages fell somewhat, and on the other, the cost of living went up. This affected the purchasing power of the population. As a result, per capita spending for 1956-1958 went down 3.2 percent, but rose 3.6 per cent in 1959. But these are average figures, which means that some workers’ real wages were higher than this average, while others’ were lower. We noted earlier the existence of income differentials between various categories and groups of workers.

p Data on the distribution of incomes of American families for the period 1955-1959 give an idea of the condition of the working people. The Department of Labor budget for an urban family of four amounted in 1959 to $6,024 a year, or $116 a week. But only workers in the high-paid category could count on a budget like this. A large part of the American working people had considerably less money to spend. The unions figured that great privations awaited a family with an income of less than $3,000 a year.  [347•3  Millions of families still existed on such incomes.

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p In 1959, 17 million families, or 29 per cent of the total number of families in the country, had incomes of less than $3,000 a year. In 1955, the figure had been 36 per cent. Who were these people? The bulk of them were unskilled workers and people employed in the services field who, in 1958, were making an average of $2,300 a vear. About 60 per cent of the Negro families made less than $3,000 in 1958.  [348•1 

p At the bottom of the social ladder were wage earners with incomes of less than $1,000 a year. In 1959, there were 4.1 million such families, or 7 per cent of the total. They could count on an income of less than $20 a week, which, in conditions of the USA, doomed them to poverty. Over 20 per cent of the Negroes employed in industry and agriculture and 41 per cent of all working women were in this bracket.

p The number of families with incomes below $1,000 a year declined by 4 per cent over the five year period (1955-1959), which indicated a certain improvement in the condition of the low-paid worker category. However, in that same period, the number of families with incomes between $1,000 and $2,000 did not change. They numbered 7 million in 1959, comprising 12 per cent of all families.  [348•2 

p The incomes of families of skilled workers in 1958 were around $5,800 a year, close to the Department of Labor’s figure for a “modest but adequate" budget for the average family. Semiskilled workers had average earnings of $4,800 a year. This, then, in general, was how the average incomes of different categories of workers compared with the income needed for a family of four to live at a “modest but adequate" standard.

p At the same time, the gap continued to widen between the incomes of millions of working people, on the one hand, and of the small group representing the monopoly bourgeoisie, which surrounded itself with a high-paid apparatus of company presidents, managers, lawyers, etc. This group was in the top category of families with incomes of $50,000 a year and higher. From 1950 through 1959, the percentage of such families 349 remained roughly the same, increasing only from 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of all families. But their incomes, in aggregate, had doubled—from $7.6 billion to $15.2 billion.  [349•1 

p In 1959, virtually all categories of blue- and white-collar workers were in income brackets of up to $6,000 a year. In that year, 57 per cent of all American families were in this group. Their share of the national income was 28.8 per cent, while in 1955, they had received 40 per cent.  [349•2  This drop stemmed from a certain reduction in the number of families with incomes of up to $6,000, on the one hand, and the rapid growth of incomes of well-to-do families, on the other. The rich became richer, taking an ever larger share of the national income.

p From March 1956, the official minimum wage established by federal law was increased to one dollar an hour. This somewhat improved the condition of some low-paid categories of working people. However, millions of workers in trade, services, and agriculture were again, as in 1938, not covered by this minimum.

p Many workers experienced privations due to unemployment. Unemployment benefits did not provide a subsistence minimum, since, in 1959, they averaged only $33.70 a week, or a little over one-third of the average wage of industrial workers. In the southern states these benefits went as low as $20 a week.

On the whole, however, as a result of vigorous strike action, and notwithstanding the intensified offensive against the labor movement on the part of reaction, a considerable part of the American workers saw an improvement in their economic condition in the second half of the 1950s.