,. Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom Edited and mnadged by students of the University of Michigan A Sterling worker-student alliance N' ' 420 Moynard St.1 Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or}the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. THURSDAY, APRIL 17; 1969, NIGHT EDITOR: STUART GANNES Nixn' s budget: Misunderstanding priorities THSHAPE that the new federal budget appears to be taking following Presi- dent Nixon's disclosures of the projected changes in non-defen'se areas is con- tinuing evidence of the misplaced priori- ties of' American society in general and government in particular. The budget, which for purely f i s c a l reasons will be nearly $4 billion less than that proposed by former President John- son, includes cuts amounting to $1.1 bil- lion in the defense sector, $1.0 billion in social security, and $1.9 billion in other areas. Thus the proposed budget will further perpetrate the United States' pro- pensity to concentrate funds in military areas, decreasing vitally important do- mestic programs while continuing to pour $30 billion a year into the Vietnam war and another $50 billion into other "defense" programs. THE CHIEF victim of the new budget is the social security program. Un- der Nixon's proposal, benefits would be increased across-the-board by seven per cent, as opposed to the ten per cent in- crease asked by Johnson. Since the entire Nixon budget is aimed ,at curbing infla- tion, which hits hardest 'those people - including social security beneficiaries - who must live on fixed incomes, it seems odd that the major cut in that budget will be to the detriment of the very peo- ple the government's fiscal policies are designed to help. At the current rate of nearly'five per cent inflation per year, a seven per cent increase in benefits in 1970 will' do little more than keep social security recipients at their current level of indigence. A considerably more gen- erous increase in benefits is necessary to raise the bottom 20 per cent of recipients about the poverty level. THE- BULK of the other cuts in the proposed budget fall under the. De- partment of Health, Education and Wel- fare. Vitally important programs under HUD and the Interior Department will also be restrained or even crippled by re- duced funds. Urban development projects are en- dangered bar a proposed cut in the fiscal 1970 budget of $1.25 billion for model Sports Staff JOEL BLOCK, Sports Editor ANDY BARBAS, Executive Sports Editor BILL CUSUMANO ............Associate Sports Editor JIM FORRESTER............Associate Sports Editor ROBIN WRIGHT ., ... Associate Sports Editor JOE MARKER ................Contributing Editor Business Staff GEORGE BRISTOL, Business Manager STEVE ELMAN . Administrative Advertising Manager SUE LERNER ... ............,,Senior Sales Manager LUCY PAPP ...................Senior Sales Manager NANCY ASIN . . Senior Circulation Manager BRUCE HAYDON..................Finance Manager DARJA KROGULSKI....... Associate Finance Manager B RBARA SCHULZ...........Personnel Manager cities and $1.25 b llion for urban renewal. Although Nixon has requested $675 milr lion for model cities in fiscal 1969, the program is almost bound to fail without additional funds the following year. The administration takes a positive step in its request that Congress not "freeze" the $322 million of Federal Aid to Dependent Children. But further wel- fare programs, such as development of a program for a guaranteed annual in- come' will have to wait until fiscal 1970. EDUCATION may also suffer under the proposed budget. The President has proposed a drastic reduction in aid to federally impacted school districts, as well as reduced construction grants for higher education and library facilities. But it is in health programs that the new budget may have the most disastrous long-term effects. A proposed reduction of $267 million in Medicaid funds will hurt only those in need of care now, but cuts of $104 million in Hill-Burton hos- pital construction funds and lowered ap- propriations for medical research under the National Institutes of Health ,w i l l have far-reaching effects many .y e a r s into the future. A NOTHER example of the budget's short-sightedness is its treatment of the Park Service. While operating funds to keep present parks open 'on week- ends - will be increased, monies for the acquisition of new parks and forest lands have been sharply reduced. Once wilderness areas are destroyed, they can- not be replaced; yet acquisition is given the lowest priority instead of the highest. Finally, the transportation budget has been juggled to give most of the funds available to highway construction. Much- needed airport development and mass- transit systems - to say nothing of the development of high-speed railroads to alleviate the problem of crowded high- ways - are almost totally ignored. PIE NIXON Administration is in an un- derstandably difficult position when it attempts to assess the relative values of a variety of domestic programs in order to determine where the ax should be ap- plied. But none of the proposed cuts are justified, when 40 per cent of the Federal budget is still being used for purposes of war, and when the Administration's own" ABM project stands to add so much more of the people's money to the already bloated defense budget. There would be no need to make such cuts if the govern- ment did not insist on being the world's policeman. While it does, domestic wel- fare will continue to suffer. -JENNY STILLER Editorial Page Editor (EDITOR'S NOTE: Bruce Levine, a frequent contributor to T h e Daily, is a member of Radical Cau- cus and the Independent Socialist Club.) By BRUCE LEVINE LAST WEEK THERE was a wild- cat (i.e. an "unauthorized") strike at the Chrysler Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights, which employs 3500. The Daily covered the story: fifty workers were or- dered by their foremen to remove scraps of metal from a halted conveyor belt. The metal was jag- ged and sharp, and the ten-foot- deep pit into which the Workers were told to drag the metal had walls slippery with oil. Citing the obvious safety hazard involved, the workers refused to carry out their orders. They were fired. When the union local's officers supported the fired men, those of- ficers, too, were fired. That was that. The entire work force went out. The United Auto Workers In- ternational ordered the men back to work (the strike had not been authorizedtby the International, you see), and when these orders, too, were refused, the Internation- al placed the local under receiver- ship-seizing the local's treasury and placing the local's affairs di- rectly in the hands of the Inter- national representative. Still the wildcat continued. Students from Ann Arbor and Detroit joined the workers on the picket lines at this point. Thesnext day (Tuesday, April.8) , only seven of the plant's employes crossed the picket lines for the morning shift. OneThursday, the workers re- turned to work-but only after forcing the International repre- sentative to promise a strike vote for the following Monday and to pledge the International's support of a renewed strike should the vote call for it. It should be noted that even then the vote to return seems to have been as much the product of the slippery handling of the meeting by the International rep- resentative as of rank-and-file weariness. QUESTION ONE: Why did the International union try to crush the wildcat? The answer to this question lies in understanding the values and aspirations of those who run the powerful union bureaucracies. Many of these people have been professional bureaucrats for years, and long ago forgot what it means to work in an auto plant. They have a new job, now, and new concerns, therefore. In effect, they have "dropped out" of the work- ing class. Their views on unionism con- form to their new outlook, rather then that of the union rank-and- filer. Thus, for the bureaucrat a healthy union is one which (1') maintains a large treasury in re- serve at all times, (2) can effec- tively and firmly ("efficiently") be run by the officers at the top of the bureaucratic pyramid, and (3) receives sufficient "respect" from industry's executives to allow the union's officials to associate "as equals" with those executives-i.e., a union which earns for its offi- cials "upward status mobility." A wildcat strike waged over working conditions threatens all three of these bureaucratic values. For one thing, any strike fought to change Working conditions meets much stronger managerial oposition than does one fought for simple wage increase (for reasons discussed later). SUCH A STRIKE is likely, as a consequence, to drag out much longer and therefore cut more deeply into the union's treasury. Similarly,union bureaucrats fear such confrontations because the increased management hostility is certain to carrybover into greater future tension between the heads of the industrial and union estab- lishments-depriving the latter of its much sought-after "respect- ability' in management's eyes. Additionally, battles waged over working conditions (involving as they must grievances over the specific conditions, of many and differing plants) require a much greater decentralization of leader- ship and decision-making .within the union than do those involving monolithic, industry-wide wage demands. A widcat strike, finally, merely aggravates the union bureaucrat's fears, since by definition, such a strike is a repudiation of the local's responsibility to "clear" the strike with the hierarchy. QUESTION TWO: WHY did the workers fight so hard against in- superable odds - especially after losing what little financial relief they had when the International seized the local's treasury? One answer, of course, lies on the surface: the workers were ob- viously concerned with the danger- ous conditions under which their fellows were forced to work. Since, as we've already seen, the union establishment avoids whenever possible going to bat for its mem- bers over working conditions, the rank-and-filers were forced to go it alone. But this is only part of the story, and explains only why the wildcat was launched, not why it held on so tenaciously. Some of the rest of the story can be glimpsed in the words of a worker from the Hantramck plant marching in sympathy with the Sterling pick- ets: "An honest day's work for an honest day's pay is okay, I guess- but not all the money in the world makes it any easier to stand a day in these plants. It ruins you: you. get home wasted. You've got no time for the family and just enough energy to watch some TV before going to bed." The eruption at Sterling wa in part symbolic of the workers' pent- up frustration and hostility to- ward their inability to make their work-lives any more bearable or meaningful to themselves-with or without a wage increase and a new car. In the factory, the worker is literally out of control. For eight hours he sells his body to Chrysler and at the end of the shift finds himself drained-in the interest of efficient profit-making. QUESTION THREE: Consider- ing the great financial loss suf- fered by Chrysler because of the strike (including the interstate idling of other' Chrysler plants de- pendent upon parts produced at Sterling), why has management remained so adamant for so long over what is seemingly so trivial a matter as a scrap-pit and some ' 3 -U- /p FC y1 ' 4 -Daily-Jim Neubacher firings? They could have saved a lot of money and grief by agree- ing immediately to revise the safety procedures' involved. Why didn't. they? This question is probably the one hardest to answer, since man- agement is not especially interest- ed in showing us its hand. We can, get some assistance, though, from a study of a similar situation made some years ago by sociologistAlvin Gouldner . (entitled, aptly enough, Wildcat .Strike: Management in that case was well acquainted with the kind of grievances expressed by the worke' from Hamtramck quoted above. And if the tank and file had not yet realized fully the logical extension of their own de- sires-management had: "Management also tended to conceive of the strike as a struggle for control of the plant. It was not quite a pure :struggle for power, not ehtirely a power conflict, but it is rather close to it and may become even more clearly so in the future, their conception suggested: The workers don't look at the stripe in the light that,'we've got the strength,' mused a main office executive. 'Yet they have a strong desire to run the plants.' " (em-, phasis in original). THERE IT IS. A strong desire to run the plants. That ultimate' threat to the capitalist: an attack upon the system's seminal prin- ciple of private property - and conjured up not by the success- ful agitation of a University radi- cal (who, if necessary, could be isolated and neutralized), but spawned by the very nature of the work process itself!4 The capitalist understands his need - control, power ownership. He understands, too, the worker's latent desire - control, power ownership. And the capitalist un- derstands further that upon the resolution of that conflict de- pends the future of his class' status. No matter that filling in the pit was the cheapest way out-- Chrysler had a more important consideration: to , assert in the strongest terms its own hegemony regarding control of the work pro- cess, to assert its exclusive power of decision-making in the plant, and to prove to its employes that on such matters the company would not be moved. The workers' "strong desire to run tie plants" had to be discouraged at all costs. As Gouldner explains: "Management could not merely evaluate and choose its problem solutions in terms of their ability to realize the formal -ends of in- creasing production and'lowering unit costs; they also required solu- tions which would be compatible with their status interests. They were, therefore, disposed to resist any solution whicO~ threatened their prerogatives and diminished their control over the situation, however much it might improve efficiency." IT IS TEMPTIAG at this point grandly to announce that "The implications of all this are ob- vious," but that is not true. It is not at, all obvious how a student can best relate to "a worker, let alone how a student movement can best relate to a working-cla'ss movement. But such considerations belong in another study. Let us simply note that when we talk today about the student movement, we talk about weakness. As we begin to consider the working class, we discover tremendous strength; and. more importantly, we find that strength beginning to be mai- shalled-insofar as we really are for the, substitution of workers' control-from-below for ownership/ direction-from-above (i.e., of so- cialism for capitalism)-we find that . strength beginning to be marshalled on "our" side of the barricades for a change. 4 m The student leader and what makes him tick By MARK SCHREIBER Daily Guest Writer Second of two parts THE NEW student activists are probably more issue oriented. ;1 think a single issue often prompts their initial participation. A stu- dent is ticked at having to take Spanish 101, so he joins the R di- cal Caucus on the language issue. Or a kid accustomed to a nice house, is angere1 because the landlord "forgets" o turn the heat on in the winter. He then decides to organize for the rent strike. N BOTH THE OLD and new student politician, there seems to be a curious mix of personal de- sires. The liking for recognition, prestige, responsibility, and even power are a part of numerous stu- dent activists. To say next year's freshman will not have to take Spanish 101 or that Arbor Man- agement will not dare turn off the heat in the future, means you by your abilties have helped fell Goliath. Others, on the other hand, en- joy their picture in the paper for haggling over meaningless resolu- tions. In this sense some SGC members are like the Congressman whose publicity campaign for re- most effective student leaders here, you would not want as friends. THERE ARE REWARDS from being a student activist. One ac- quires the classical political skills. Anyone in the three organizations learns how to speak to different student groups, write political material, and operate the ma- chines indispensable _ for propa- ganda - the mimeo, stencil and off-set press. The budding student politician learns to seek out and obtain information. One gets a feel for who is responsible for decisions in the University. A student, if he is sensitive and determined, learns how to develop an issue. One must know the re- porters on The Daily and what groups are critical for support. Few endorsements by student groups are spontaneous. They are sought out. Recognition of the rent strike, from SGC to the UAW, was planned in advance. When an is- sue peaks, one gets a further sense of the political process: deciding what it means to w n or lose. ONE BEGINS to understand the age-old ABC's of politics-alliance, bargaining, and compromise. The rent strike, for example, will not be stopped when the landlords recognize a Tenants Union. It will others to one's specific plans. If you look at the rent strike as an attempt by an oppressed segment of society to realize their power; life is a lot more comprehensible. SGC, Radical Caucus and The Daily provide a training ground for liberal political elites in our future society. The leaders of these student organizations have and will enter high positions in the government, journalism, and social reform groups. THERE ARE ALSO problems and sacrifices in being a student activist. First, one must give up time and often money. An election to an SGC council seat costs any- where from $15-$75 in campaign expenses, and for president from $50-$250. There are numerous ways 'to get around the budget limitations set by the rules com- mittee. One will not be able to give much attention to academic work. A student leader must get over any achievement motive reflected. in good grades or serious academic work. He must convince himself that personal success is now par- tially measured in political suc- cess. If the student cannot do this, he will live with continual frustra- tion and his involvement will be short lived. The free time of a student ac- tivist also becomes limited and SECONDLY, IF an activist is really determined, there is the question of how far he is willing to carry his ideas. What risks is he willing to take? If he fails, gets suspended or busted, how will this affect his personal future? Ron Glotta, attorney for the rent strike, said, "When you try to buck society, society will come down very hard .on you." Everyone on the- rent strike steering committee knew from the outset the possibility that they, could be sued in civil court for third party interference with con- tract, or prosecuted in federal court for criminal conspiracy. In January the prospects in the Ann Arbor courts with Judge Elden looked very dim. The intensity with which the tenant organizers progressed testifies to their com- mitment. A THIRD PROBLEM arises if one expects student politics to be humane. If you learn the skill of politics, you also see its underside: it can be just as bureaucratic, au- thoritarian and dehumanizing as Washington. Mark Rudd, when he spoke here, summed up the matter in the "di- lemma of being a non-authorita- rian leader": with one's political prejudices, energies, and desire for change, how do you deal with peo- to combat the psYchologicl drain of this imlatience. Student leaders have to accept small steps at times, and reconcile themselves to long term efforts. FOR INSTANCE, some people see the rent strike as both sudden- ly-created and of a semester's duration. Neither of these are ac- curate. The rent strike began af- ter two years work by the Student Housing Association in gathering information,', boycotting Apart- ments Ltd., and attempting ne- gotiations with landlords over an eight month lease. The c u r r e n t effort will not end with several victories in court or even a gen- eral settlement of the strike. The success of the Tenant's Union will be measured in i t s sustained bargaining power, after the initial agreements are reached and the strike won. This means a gestation period of two to three years in forming a representative and encompassing Tenant's Un- ion. The balance of rewards and sac- rifices determines how long a student will remain in the poli- tical game. Discouragement is easy and frequent. When a s t u- Jent activist stops deriving j o y from his work, he drops out. Few of the faces of three years ago are present 'in the S.A.B. now. This is one of the real problems of the Grants could be given to grad- uate students for "leadership in- tern" studies. They would have a year for writing proposals for stu- dent projects and/or devoting their time to actually developing a political issue on campus. Teaching fellows in the social sciences could have lab sessions and seminars in political activity. Each class would choose a pro- ject underway or a new one, and spend the semester working on it, like the Social Work School. For example, an introductory econom- ics class could learn about' local market conditions by organizing for the rent strike. A series! of guest lecturers in selected aspects of student activism could be ar- ranged. Topics could include vot- er registration, underground press, guerilla theatre, grape boycotts, etc. Students could take a semes- ter travel course in activisms, visit- ing or participating in projects in other Universities. Travel gra'nts could be made available for spec- ial occurences, like the Columbia protest. These practical courses could be integrated with the form- al social sciences to form a minor or major area of study called "Po- litical Training." ONE MARK of a good student activist is a fertile mind. If stu- dents do not have money or pow- er, thley have to use their wits.