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This is assignment for a weekly report to the West tonight. A special survey for Labor Day 1963 produced in the community interest by the news and documentary department of K. R. O. N. T. V. The dilemma of the unions in a time of plenty. This is

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the story of labor's uncertain victory. In 1963 organized labour holds a position of influence that has not been equaled in history. The american worker is the best paid, has the most impressive collection of job benefits and enjoys the most effective job security of any worker who

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ever lived the unions after a generation of militant organizing have achieved a remarkable victory in the US Today. A worker earns the money to live as well as his white collar counterpart. In fact, he may live better than some junior executives in a more expensive home

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enjoying more elaborate vacations driving a better car. But the victory of the unions is not unconditional across the wide landscape of history. It may even turn out to have been nothing more than an interlude of supremacy destined to fade out as quickly as it was. one

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in this book which is going to be published in the middle of october. I've tried to examine the state of american unions today and one of the conclusions that I've had to come to unfortunately and sadly is that it's entirely possible that in the years to

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come and then not many years to come, unions might disappear from the scene in the United States. They may not disappear completely, but they'll disappear in terms of the kind of influence they have had in the country. And the reason I had to come to this

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conclusion is that I think today unions are faced with a set of problems which they cannot solve. And it's for this reason that I think that today american unions, despite the great victories, they've been able to win on the economic front, despite the fact that they

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have brought industrial justice to the factories are faced with a crisis such as they've never had to face before. For example, the problem of unemployment is a problem which is completely impossible to be solved in terms of collective bargaining. Now, we've gotten into this situation of

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a kind of permanent state of unemployment because primarily automation has come at a faster rate than anybody believed was going to be possible. Now, along with this increase in automation, there's been a tremendous increase in productivity so that we have the situation where fewer number of

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workers can produce increasingly larger amounts of goods, but nobody is available to buy these goods. There aren't enough jobs around to take care of the amount of goods that are being produced along with this unions have also faced a tremendous shift in the character of the

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workforce because what we have in the society today, our technicians, rather than blue collar workers and technicians and white collar workers are traditionally not in unions, so that all these factors, the unemployment, the shift in the nature of the work force, the increase in the amount

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of productivity, all of these factors result in a decline in the size of the union portion of the workforce. And at the very time that this has been happening, that these outside factors have been operating on unions, unions have been the least capable of dealing either

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with that problem or with some of the other problems of society. For example, the unions have lagged on the question of the negroes and on this question, on the problem of the negroes. With the exception of a few unions, the general trade union movement has been

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no better and in some cases even worse than the rest of society in trying to bring the negro up to the, to the position that he rightfully ought to be able to hope so too. One reason that the unions have been having so much difficulty with

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these outside problems is that internally there has been a tremendous loss of spirit. There was a time during the 30's when to be a union representative, to be a union official, to be a union member was an exciting thing today. There is very little spirit among

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union leaders and today, even the union members view their union as if it were some kind of uh, service institution. They view the union and much of the way that I view my automobile club and this too, was part of the problem that we face in

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the society today, because unless unions do somehow come back to the kind of tradition of idealism to the kind of spirit that they once had. The problems of unemployment, the problems of automation, the problems of the shift in the workforce, the negro problems will either not

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be solved at all, which means that the country will be in an extremely bad position or they'll be solved by some outside force. They'll be solved by the government in some fashion. And unions will have lost then the kind of voluntary spirit that once characterized them

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as a movement inside the casual labor office of the state Employment department in san Francisco, a university of California, research specialist, mingles with unskilled men looking for work, paul. Jacobs is an author staff director for a project of the center for the study of democratic institutions

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in santa Barbara, a one time union organizer, Jacobs is one of the country's leading authorities on trade unionism. Mhm, mhm, mm hmm. This is my room. I pay $7 a week for, it's not a bad room because these kinds of the rooms go, this room is

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down in the Mission district, the san Francisco, it's not skid row, it happens to be an area which has about the highest percentage of unemployed workers living in it of any place in san Francisco except for the fillmore district which is predominantly negro. The room is

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eight ft square approximately. It's pretty clean as you can, as you will see. It's not very nice, but at least there aren't any bugs in the bed and the room was swept out every day. There are a couple of 1000 people who are unemployed living in

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this district in rooms, much the same as this. I came down here a couple of weeks ago because I'm writing a book about unemployed workers and I've been wanting to live with unemployed workers and see how they live and try to capture some sense of what

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life is like when you're unemployed in the United States today, I've been in west Virginia with the coal miners. I've been in upstate new york. Before I finish, I will be in a lot of other parts of the country. Always trying to get some sense, capture

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some idea of what unemployment is like for the people who are unemployed. In a curious way this area that I've been living in reflects a kind of contradiction about the problem of unions and unemployment today because just a couple of blocks away from here, the headquarters

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of a number of unions. The Central labor council is just two blocks away, there's a butcher's local, right around the corner, there's a retail clerks local, right around the corner, but so far as the people who live in rooms like this, we'll eat in the cafeteria,

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we'd across the street in the sincere cafe so far as they're concerned there's no connection between their lives and the unions. the unions are a world apart for them. They have nothing to do with them. They don't understand the union or if they think about the

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union, they almost think about it as an enemy. And this is one of the great tragedies of what's happened in the United States today, that unemployed workers should look on the union, not as an instrument that's going to protect them, not as uh an organization which

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is going to be working on their behalf continually, but rather as something which stands between them and the kind of thing that they want, which is at the moment, of course, just jobs In the old days in the 30s, when there was a depression, the people

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who were unemployed thought that they were victims of a social crisis. They knew there was a depression going on, and they believed that they too were part of this depression. They didn't think that being unemployed was their fault. They knew there were no jobs. And so

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therefore they shared a kind of condition with everyone else who was unemployed. But today's unemployed are different. Today's unemployed, have accepted the myth which so many people in the United States have accepted that this is an affluent society that everybody's well off in this society, that

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there is no poverty in this society and therefore today's unemployed are ashamed of themselves and apathetic as a result of this. They feel as if somehow they were responsible for their own state of unemployment instead of understanding that the nature of the society in which we're

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living today has created this kind of unemployment because there's no doubt that the major problem, the major problem with the future in the United States is this high rate of unemployment and the rest of the country, It's 5.6%. That means that 56 out of every 1000

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workers are unemployed in this district. It's a great deal hyo even than that. No one seems to care very much about these unemployed people and this depresses me, it depresses me to see that the institutions of the society are so impersonal and seem to care so

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little about the condition of these unemployed workers. The other thing, of course, that's been depressing sort of aspect to my life among unemployed workers is just the physical conditions. Did you live in a room like this? You have a bureau, a dresser that looks something like

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this. It's weather beaten, it's beat up. God knows how many thousands of people have used this kind of a dresser before. On the top of it is a plastic scarf and a little old ashtray from a a gambling joint over in Nevada, a gambling joint that

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these people probably have never seen the draws stick when you pull them open and the inside of them isn't a particularly clean when you live in a room like this, you have to wash in a basin that looks like this. The water taps run all the

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time. They never stopped running. They don't make a lot of noise. But the inside of the sink is stained with rust that's inevitable. You know, because I only pay very little money for this room because hot water is expensive. The hot water tap is the kind

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of tap, it doesn't stay on well. As soon as you let it go, the tap cuts off again. So you have to wash with one hand or use put this in and fill the sink up with water if you live in a room like this, your

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towel rack. So what it looks like, that towel, right? And there's no medicine cabinet. You put your your shaving gear and your toothbrush and all the rest in a little recess in the wall or you do as I do. And you put it down here on

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the, on the table because that's not an especially clean place to keep my toothbrush and I'm not able to overcome the habits and the patterns that I have living out in the pacific heights. And so the result of all this of living in this room and

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seeing what this room is like and looking at this, all these things, looking at the wallpaper and and hearing the noises next door result has been to put me into a profound state of depression, the kind of depression where when I wake up in the middle

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of the night in this room I'd come to with a start and I look around me to say, where am I, how did I get here? And inside the labor movement itself, there are thousands of workers who never quite managed to share the abundance which the

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union man is widely reputed to enjoy in this age of affluence. Not all Union workers earn $3 or $4 an hour or two up to the job in a luxury car. Some of them are in a good deal less than a comfortable way. I have to

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call you Mcdaniel. I have worked here for five years, have a family of seven Children which I am the sole supporter of. I made a dollar 85 a half cents an hour. Sometimes the funds were quite low, especially this time of year when school is starting

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and around christmas time. The international president of the A. F. L. C. I. O. Union, which represents the kolya Mcdonald is headquartered in Oakland, in the higher councils of the A. F. L. C. I. O. Russell Crowl occupies a position identical to that of the auto

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workers walter ruth and the steelworkers. James Mcdonald. But there the comparison ends for Crowley's laundry workers union enjoys none of the economic prestige or industrial impact of its more highly publicized peers. Piccola is a member of local two of the F. L. C. A laundry and

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dry cleaning internews the national union, She represents a group of workers in the american society Service workers in general that are the perhaps the very lowest paid most difficult to organize. Workers in the american scene, wages such as she described of a dollar 8500 union contract

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in this area are considerably better than twice the national average. It means that these workers barely have enough to uh to subsist and subsist them at a semi starvation level. They are not good consumers. Obviously with wages such as this, they are not able to buy

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the consumer goods. The hard goods such as refrigerators and automobiles. They are not able to uh huh contribute to the american economy by reason of being able to enjoy uh the little luxuries of life being able to eat a meal out to enjoy a vacation. They

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just don't have the money to afford these things. It always comes as a surprise to people that laundry workers are not covered under the fair labor standards act as a group. Only a small percentage, perhaps 15 or 16 happen to be working enterprises that are big

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enough to be considered to be in interstate commerce and therefore covered Wages. Even in the year of our Lord 1963 of 55 or 60 cents an hour are quite common throughout the United States. These conditions and these wages make for a very miserable existence. These are

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the people I I think that it can be fairly said have been overlooked by the american society in general and to a large extent by the labor movement itself. Matthew J. Dooley, general counsel for the laundry and linen supply board of Trade of SAn Francisco points

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out that laundry workers in the Bay Area not only draw top wages for their industry nationally but are paid well compared to other industries in this area. In the san Francisco Bay Area, we have a wage rate that runs an average of approximately a dollar 85

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to a dollar 87 a half cents per hour. In addition to that there are fringe benefits amounting to approximately 37 a half cents an hour. These fringe benefits are direct benefits to the employees, such as paid holidays. We have seven paid holidays, we have two weeks

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vacation after three years employment with full pay and one week's vacation with full pay after one year's employment. In addition there to the employees are given pensions At the age of 60 or if they wish to work on 65. The pension program is a very sound

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one that is completely paid by the employer. We have the health and welfare plan that provides hospitalization and doctor and medical attention at the sole cost of the employer. These items all add up to the cost and as I indicated they aggregate approximately um 37 a

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half cents per hour. Thus it cannot be said that the wage rate in the san Francisco bay area is substandard or subnormal. In fact it's far above anywhere in the United States, 1963, it appeared trade unions no longer took the lead in solving the major labor

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problems of the us for a variety of reasons. The unions which carved out an impressive record of social improvement for the working man, were no longer able to provide moral leadership In the most spectacular social movement of the 60s. The Negro Revolution for full equality, organized

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labor, far from leading the way was singled out by the negro is one of the key culprits practicing segregation. We must face the fact that this large number of unemployed negroes are due mainly to discrimination and the lesser reason of automation. Here in san Francisco automation

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is taking its toll, but prevailing discriminatory hiring and promotion policies are slowly squeezing the negroes out of job opportunities. This discrimination is manifest in federal government, state government, city and county government, private business and industries and last but not least through our labor union, I have

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had believe it or not, some of the most humiliating experience of discrimination I think that anybody could experience, you could be fired on a job, go back to the local the same day and there would be a call in for men's back to the same job.

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Carpenter Robert Spence, 20 years experience in his trade, a family of four Children to support. He feels he doesn't share the improved working conditions. The labor movement is supposed to have one for the working man. The union has changed when you joined the local, I mean

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you went in there too fight for better conditions and certain benefits and so forth. And I mean you felt that you were gaining something by, but now it's a, you feel about a local more or less like a compulsory. You either have to join the local

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in order to work even though you know that you're not going to get equal opportunities through the local. And the thing that you see happen in different locals. I know that there are locals that uh, you even pay for job. This has happened to me in

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a number of time and actually, but being in a position, uh, you had very little charge because you had to work and earn a living. I mean it's a matter of taking a few bucks off the top to pay for it. Well, you paid for it

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and that's what I did. Oh. Mhm. Three for her, right. But we are prepared to sit down and talk since, wow, we have testify about demands. But do you know one thing before walking has brought us thus far along the way and we're not going downtown

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talking big with nobody walking in back of us. I want to know if things get tough, will you walk with Children? Yeah. Yeah, mm hmm. Yeah, Automation in the 60s. What happens when jobs are abolished? Well, I've And on the railroad as a locomotive fireman helper

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for 12 years, you have to be with him around 20 years before you can work as an engineer all year round. But basically right now at the seniority I have, I work as a yard fireman. The company's never really, they have been rather vague and how

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they would apply. The rule changes, but it seems like they want to eliminate all the firemen immediately. In my division, I guess, possibly 200 250 men. The rail work rules dispute imposed the major strike threat of 1963. As the railroads sought to abolish the job of

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locomotive fireman, the firemen's union refuses to agree that automation is involved arguing the fireman is still needed on a locomotive Regardless of the merits on either side of the question. The fact that 37,000 railroad jobs were threatened, made this the key automation controversy of the year.

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It also proved to be the one that traditional collective bargaining machinery was unable to settle. As Congress hectic lee seeks a new expedient to avert a nationwide rail strike. Thousands of families like that of fireman. Richard Sacconi of daly city anxiously await the outcome. It's been

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talked about for so long. Dick has been talking about this for three years or four and now it's just coming to a head and it has nothing to do now. But just just to see, I mean, finally here, it's been so long in the coming, you

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know, that's hard to believe that the railroads will manage it, but if they do, I'm not afraid of it. Dick has been cut off For about eight of our at least seven of our 10 married years and I've been through it. There isn't any fun when

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you go to the grocery story and try and get buy on $50 a week, but I'm not afraid of it. You know, I hope it doesn't happen. But I think if Dick lost his job, I think I would try and influence him to just start something

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else and move and as long as you don't have to be here where the high cost of living is, see if you can make it somewhere else in a strange way, we're becoming accustomed in the United States to having a permanent body of unemployed workers as

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if this was a natural thing. And yet if you step back and think about it, a man's right to the opportunity to, to a job, a man's right to look For a job with some hope that he's going to find one is just as important to

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write as is the right to a public education and this right is the right, which I think today unions have the responsibility to do something about. I think they have that responsibility first of all because they represent workers, secondly because there's no other force in the

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society which is likely to do it. And finally because they're in a very special position to be able to do it. And what I think is that unless unions today attempt to solve the problems with which the whole country is faced, The problems of unemployment, the

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problems of automation, the problems of the negro unless unions attempt to solve those problems away from the bargaining table where they can't be solved. And in the field of politics, this country is going to be in for a bad time. And when I say the union's

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must solve these problems in terms of politics. I don't mean in terms of just running a campaign to elect a friend or defeat an enemy as important as that may very well be. I mean that the whole level of politics in the United States must be

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raised by the unions to a point where these kinds of questions. The question of hidden unemployment, hidden poverty, the negro problem. The whole problem of automation will come out in the open will have a political discussion at the very highest level. And I think that unless

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unions do this, not even so much because they would want to, but because they must do so, unions may very well disappear. In reply to paul Jacobs a bay Area union leader, executive secretary robert? S Ash of the Alameda County's Central labor council says labor unions

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aren't have been working to solve the problems of unemployment, automation and discrimination. This matter of of discrimination and automation. I think the two prime problems that uh I don't think that the labor movement or rather I should say, I think that the labor movement has led

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the way and that we've been doing a job that oh, we've had no opportunity to get to the to the public on. I know here locally in my own area in Alameda County that we've been pushing, the government officials been pushing our own unions where there's

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been some discrimination, have been alleged discrimination, at least to where we've worked most of them out. Our problem now is to continue this uh to continue to work for uh opportunities for all, either in the matter of uh civil rights or in a matter of jobs

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where people are faced with loss of jobs because of automation, automation. I don't, it'll take anybody is silly enough to think that they can stop. It. Been several industries and american unions that have partially at least at least solved it. And the the latest of course

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has been the settlement or the agreement arrived at between the United Steelworkers and Kaiser steel where they've adopted a formula to take care of this matter of automation and to pay the people who are replaced san Francisco or the west coast waterfront has done a has

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negotiated a a similar contract. Some of the printing trade unions have been confronted with automation for years and they've, over the period of 35, 40, 50 or 100 years, they've been able to continually train their people so that they can assume these new skills. And I

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think that from the standpoint of the job that the people of the United States and particularly within the labor movement and more particularly the labor movement here in Alameda County would like to do that. Our prime uhh our first job right now. This matter of civil

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rights is to get a more a more cooperation, more honest effort on the part of school authorities uh, to make it possible for people to retrain themselves without regard to whether or not they have very much of a formal education or not. I regard to civil

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rights and uh, I don't mean the county labor movement I believe has been one of the labor organizations in the forefront over the period of years. And working in this and trying to uh eliminate the discrimination not only in jobs in an industry but to eliminate

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uh discrimination. That has been in some of the unions in Alameda County who had a fairly good record. I believe assignment for a weekly report to the west was produced in the community interest by the news and documentary department of K. R. O. N. T. V.

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Mhm. Mhm mm hmm. Next monday evening assignment, four moves to a new time, join us one half hour later at seven p.m. Next monday on assignment four mm hmm.