Page:William F. Dunne - The Threat to the Labor Movement (1927).pdf/13



N the American Fed'erationist for December, President Green, in an editorial entitled, "Communists," delivers himself of the following (republished in the A. F. of L. press service for Dec. 2):

We have here a new principle laid down for the trade union movement—the principle that Communists per se (by the fact of their belief in the political and economic theories of the Communist Party), are ineligible to both membership and leadership in trade unions irrespective of the fact that they may be (and generally are.) working at the trade over which the union has jurisdiction.

There have been expulsions of Communists before this—on both a wholesale and individual basis. A number of unions have made membership in the Communist Party adequate grounds for expulsions, but for the most part these expulsions have been carried out under other pretenses and for alleged breaches of union discipline. But this is the first time that the head of the American trade union movement has made the categorical statement that the trade unions and trade union positions are dosed to Communist working men and women.

This is a denial or the very doctrine trade union officialdom is so fond of preaching (and which contrary to the general line of its statements is entirely correct) that is, that trade unions by virtue of the fact that they are working class organiationsorganizations [sic], must take in all workers of the craft, occupation or industry in which they operate.

The socialist party press and the trade union press are thus to be seen expressing the same policy which finds tactical expression as follows:

1. An effort to picture the Communists merely as disrupters, and as individuals who, taking orders from their party, care nothing whatever about the immediate victory of the workers in their daily struggles.

2. An attempt to convince the trade union membership and the working class at large that Communists are not workers but interlopers of a mysterious kind who wriggle their way into unions by other methods than the correct one of working for wages and joining the union for their occupation or industry in the regular manner.

3. The Communists—and the Communist Party—are working for the destruction of the trade unions instead of trying to make them effective in-