LABOUR IN AMERICA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19372, 9 July 1937, Page 13

LABOUR IN AMERICA

NO POLITICAL PARTY VANISHING CRAFT UNIONS Although industrial labour in the United States has recently shown greater cohesion in its organisation, according to Professor F. W. Hart, professor of school administration at the University of California, labour in America has no political significance as in other countries. It has a shifting significance, as Professor Hart termed it when interviewed on his arrival at Auckland from Sydney, and it may see fit to transfer its allegiance from the Republican to the Democrat Party. Professor Hart is on a year's leave from the university at Berkeley, Ca»» fornia. He has come to Nasv Zealand! to attend the New Education i Fellowship conference. Under the American Federation of Labour, negotiations were made on the craft basis, said Professor Hart, which meant that if a section of the building trade; say, made certain demands on employers, it did not follow that the other .crafts associated with them would give supoprt to the demands. For several years there had been an agitation for what was known as a vertical or industrial organisation which made united demands, hence the comparatively newly formed Committee for Industrial Organisation. Mr. John L. Lewis president of the new body, had brought about collective bargaining with certain industries, and the results had been more advantageous than those achieved by the old Federation of Labour craft unions, said the professor. j "We have no Labour Party in the United States," he continued, "and labour there is not a political organisation. We owe that to Samuel Gompers, who would not allow the federation to become a political organisation, but arranged matters so that it could be allied to any party. At the present time American labour has allied itself with the Democrat Party. but that does not mean that it will ' support President Roosevelt through thick and thin."