UNION AND FREEDOM

[Music] so what I'm saying this afternoon to you my friends is that along with the struggle to desegregate our society which we must continue to engage in we must engage in the struggle to get good and meaningful and sound jobs for all of our people so that they can take advantages of the new opportunities that as it come this is the challenge of the hour [Music] I'm Walter Mitchell president of the international chemical Workers Union I would like to tell you about a strike one of our local unions waged this winter in Atlanta Georgia it was a hard strike all strikes are hard but our members one wage increases and won the job rights that only a Union contract can guarantee it was a historic strike it marked the first time at the southern Christian leadership conference the civil rights organization headed by Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr joined with the labor union in seeking economic Justice for industrial workers and we can get much more through an organized effort and we can get through individual effort every negro and every white person up to scripto ought to be supporting the labor union and it's no accident scripto is fighting not to deduct the wage dues from the salaries of the individual is no accident because they don't want a labor union up there because they know they've got to treat you right the strike took place at the plant of the scripto Inc company here is how one of our Representatives Jerry LaVine described the circumstances to a television interviewer majority of the employees of scrypto voted for the international chemical Workers Union to represent them in September 1963 scrypto using every legal method available was able to delay certification of the union for 8 months for the past 6 months we have been fruitlessly negotiating in an attempt to reach a just and decent Union contract this company has about 750 negro employees and 150 white employes prior to the strike only six Negroes were classified as skilled and no whites were classified as unskilled this is an obvious pattern of discrimination especially where unskilled employees ear earn only $125 an hour and after 10 years they get a 5cent raise scrypto cannot continue a 19th century labor policy in this 20th century there had been several attempts to organize scrypto over the years the Negro Community knew that conditions there needed improving the Reverend Martin Luther King senior helped our organizing drive when the chemical workers went on Str operation Bread Basket a ministerial organization immediately gave its support Reverend King's son the Nobel Prize winner and leader of the Southern Christian leadership conference joined soon after it's all right to talk about the New Jerusalem but one day we better start talking about the new Atlanta the new America the new New York and I tell you any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men is not concerned about the slums that tripple the soul the economic conditions that damn the soul and the social conditions that destroy the soul is a dead dry do nothing religion in need of New Blood naturally this backing boosted the morale of our people as our staff representative James Hampton said but in our meeting yesterday for the visitors at this meeting the members of this local union said that they will wear Tre leaves for dresses before they have craw back in that plant and be sold out for a $30 [Applause] bonus our regional director in the southeast vice president Jay Harley Thomas as Regional director for the chemical Workers Union I'm very pleased to get the help of Dr King and his group our two organizations are fighting the same battle in the South the chemical workers union doesn't care what color a man is we just want to know what kind of a job he has and we want to help him improve that job and enjoy a better life [Music] at chemical Workers Union headquarters in akan Ohio we kept close touch with the needs of the strikers [Music] we sent in staff Specialists we provided financial assistance from our International Union defense [Music] fund secretary treasurer Marshall schaer describes the procedure our Union has a fund amounting to more than a million dollars from which we pay guaranteed benefits to local unions on strike it operates like Insurance additionally we have a separate fund to cover legal costs and special contingencies for example at Christmas time we were able to provide more than $20,000 to make sure that the scrypto strikers and their families had their share of the holiday festivities our Union operated a commissary Distributing food we bought wholesale we also arranged for government surplus Commodities in a gesture of solidarity and his proof of unity of purpose Dr King and I and other officers of the Southern Christian leadership conference and the chemical workers joined the scripto picket line [Music] Charles levenson General Secretary of the International Federation of chemical and general workers unions was in the United States at the time of the strike we are affiliated with this group which has nearly 3 million members over the world at one stage of the strike the southern Christian leadership conference and the chemical workers called for a consumer boycott of scrypto products levenson volunteered the cooperation of his organization to help us reach crypto's foreign factors and markets fortunately we did not have to follow through on this weapon worldwide I'm sure it would have done irreparable damage to scrypto and we did not seek to destroy the company we simply sought Justice we won Justice we wanton it GR grinding out mile after mile on a cold [Music] [Music] pavement we won because our Union categorically rejects all racial discrimination we willingly went to the White House to sign a pledge of cooperation with a president's committee on equal employment opportunity president Mitchell I congratulate you and the members of the international chemical Workers Union in signing this pledge this plan for Progress you are reaffirming a practice of longstanding of the chemical Workers Union that there can be no such thing as rights just for a few there must be equal rights for all or there is no democracy president Mitchell your signature on this historic document here in the White House is a promise of principle I'm confident that your union will continue to march in the path of equal opportunity nothing that has happened to me since I became vice president has given me more hope for the future and more pleasure for the president than the alert statesmanship activity of the Union people of America we won in Atlanta because we had the help of Dr King and his top assistants like the Reverend CT Vivian it takes a long time to rile us up and that sometimes it seems as though that you can walk over us and everything will be all right but it seems as though we have to tell them that we've come from a long long way and there's nothing they can give us that we haven't already [Applause] received we have walked all so through the dim nights of surom but now we've been able to stand at the bottom of the hill and then we've walked up the rocky sides of Union organization and it's been too hard and too long for us to give up unions [Applause] now and we shall walk on and we shall walk and walk on the outside of scripto until we'll walk on the inside of scripto [Music] I think we found in Atlanta a formula for Community Action that will bring unionism and freedom to exploited workers elsewhere in the South and elsewhere in the nation [Music] the for