Page:Program of the Trade Union Educational League (1927).djvu/11

 Rh permeates the unions, must be driven out mercilessly. The old leadership, corrupted and acting as agents of the employers, must be replaced by men and women who are free from all alliances with the enemy, who are pledged to a fighting program, and who are themselves workers. Abolish all discrimination against women, youth, Negroes, and foreign-born workers.

(d) The trade unions must include wage workers regardless of race, creed, sex, age or color. The trade unions must declare for the removal of all bars against Negroes, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Mexicans and other races and national groups which are being discriminated against in entering the trade unions. It must demand the abolition of all Jim-Crow laws, practices and discriminations, and the elimination of lynching.

The A. F. of L. and independent unions must be convinced of the necessity of initiating an active campaign to organize the Negro workers, and demand that they be given equal pay for equal work, and extend them the utmost protection of the trade unions.

A basic cause of the general weakness of the labor movement is the fact that the workers have no mass political party, no labor party. The union officials are in alliance with the two capitalist parties. This corrupts them and spreads demoralization throughout the ranks of the workers generally. The A. F. of L. "non-partisan" policy of rewarding "friends" and punishing "enemies" on the old party tickets is an instrument of the employers to subjugate the workers, and the labor leaders are their tools by advocating it. The workers can gain nothing through the capitalist parties. No real political progress can be made by the masses until a complete break is made with the capitalist parties and the workers set up a mass party of their own based on the trade unions. The labor party, organized around a program based upon the burning needs of the workers, is the next great step necessary in the political development of the working class. It will greatly stimulate class consciousness and class organization in all directions. The T. U. E. L. calls upon the left wing and progressive forces throughout the labor movement to unite to win over the labor movement for the establishment of the labor party. Victory in establishing the labor party means the defeat of the most reactionary and corrupt forces in the labor movement.