THE THREAT TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT
year arbitration agreement and the president is therefore pleased.
The Mining Congress Journal also states that the coal operators believe they have won a victory, in its issue for December:
The operators claim that it (the contract) PROVIDES FOR A RECIPROCAL PROGRAM OF EFFICIENCY AND CO-OPERATION, which will be the basis of arbitration for any disputed points hereafter. (Emphasis mine.)
Here is "efficiency unionism" again—a magnificent "victory" for miners after a five months' strike. Under the brilliant leadership of Lewis, the arch-foe of the left wing, the anthracite miners won the right to work harder for the coal barons.
The wage scale of the anthracite miners is not even guaranteed by this Lewis "victory.". The Mining Congress Journal further states:
It is presumed that on January 1 some operators will ask for a reduction in the wage scale and thus test out the matter.
If such a condition prevailed in the fur, cloakmakers and textile workers' unions, after the left wing leadership had failed to use the full power of the unions as Lewis did, then the worker-employer co-operationists would have a slightly better case.
As it is, facts show that the only strike that was lost this year was the anthracite strike, led by John L. Lewis, in a section of industry where the Communists did not have sufficient membership at the time to be a decisive factor.
The campaign of the reactionary trade union officialdom, the socialist party, the bosses, the various agencies of the government and the capitalist press appears as a drive on the Communists and the left wing in the unions. Where Communists are numerous and active, strikes are won.
Actually it is a drive against the right to strike and therefore a drive against the whole working class.
The Fight Is on the Right to Strike.
IF, as stated previously, the real objective of the united front offensive of labor officialdom, socialist party bureaucracy, capitalists and the capitalist press, aimed now at the left wing, is not for the purpose of supplanting militant struggle by the worker-employer co-operation policy and against the right to strike, why is the drive being made in precisely those unions which have not succumbed entirely to paralysis as a result of having this pol:icy of "efficiency unionism" foisted upon them—cloakmakers and furriers?
The burden of proving their superior loyalty to the workers and their superior understanding of the problems of the labor movement in this period of rising American capitalism rests upon the sponsors of the present campaign.
Nor only the New York Times but other powerful capitalist dailies which when the garment workers were struggling to build their unions, denounced them in much the same language as they use now in speaking of Communists, openly support the trade union officialdom. This is con-
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