--l" Seventy-Fifth bYear EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNJVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS t Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MiCH. Truth Will Prevail NEws PHONE: 764-0552 FEIFFER 666, U.aS, _ MAKE UP §OHU N0ME- b'JQK. Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT MOORE Dispute over Right-to-Work Threatens Role of Unions I COT TO 6D To)TH6 ,TORF FOR WY MOTE. '4 tt~, 'ST l 6"e, FWtA5 PLAY eAS5E- iAuL OUT - 160 GT H1S TERRIBLE SAKL.JH HAT65 X ..; ..a, ' ,; ; . ',',4'a C :. ,: :, y_ : i P R WITH THE NEWS that President Lyn- don B. Johnson plans to ask Congress to repeal Section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Act, the right-to-work controversy is once again coming to the forefront of politi- cal discussion. Behind a facade of moralistic argu- ments-some sincere, others merely a public position designed to veil more pragmatic considerations-lies a dispute over the proper role of organized labor in the United States. It is lamentable, but almost inevitable, that the coming battle will become a political power strug- gle between the vested interests on both sides while efforts to objectively analyze the functions of American unionism and economic effects of right-to-work laws are forced into the background. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, with a number of restrictions clarified by sub- sequent court interpretations, permits ne- gotiation of union security agreements- that is, it officially sanctions compul- sory unionism. Normally, of course, this would make any state laws in the area of union security inapplicable to firms involved in interstate commerce, a cate- gory including almost all major business- es. However, Section 14B, a unique provi- sion included in the Taft-Hartley Act largely because of conservative pressure and a general post-war suspicion of un- ionism, reverses the normal federal-state law relationship by allowing state stat- utes placing more stringent restrictions on union security to take precedence over the Taft-Hartley Act's provisions. The result has been passage of right-to- work laws in several states, WITH THE LARGE Democratic major- ity in Congress, labor leaders are now bringing pressure to bear for repeal of Section 1413. Conservative groups are mustering support for an all-out battle against the expected legislation. Beneath the superficial political hag- gling, one legitimate argument for right- to-work laws can be found. This is the simple moral position that any man has an inherent right to work where he pleases without being forced to join a union. However, when extracted from a purely theoretical situation and applied to an economy characterized by the inter- play of powerful economic institutions, unequal distribution of economic power and an unemployment rate approaching 5 per cent, the laborer's right to work becomes an empty phrase., Big business requires a uniform con- tract for any given class of workers it employs. The laborer's choice is either to be bound by arbitrary management de- termination of contract provisions or to surrender his individual rights by dele- gating authority to a negotiator of a la- bor union. While theoretically the labor force in a free market economy should be able to exert pressure on management through the supply and demand mechanism in the labor market, this is a source of pow- er for the working man only in a full- employment economy, which is not dis- torted by the market imperfections such as big business trusts. ACCORDING to the provisions of the Wagner Act, a union-management agreement with a given firm applies to all workers employed there, or at least to all those involved in the specific line of work for which the contract was nego- tiated. Hence, if workers have an option not to join the union, they still receive the benefits of the union negotiated con- tract-a situation many workers un- doubtedly would (and do, where right-to- work laws are in effect) find attractive. While right-to-work supporters con- tend that studies have shown right-to- work laws to be neither a severe finan- cial handicap or a restriction on union growth, extenuating circumstances sur- rounding these point out severe fallacies in the argument. First, at present right-to-work laws exist only in agricultural states; locals having financial difficulties in these areas are able to draw on the bankrolls of their national affiliates with bases in northern industrial states. the strong- to a union, he is not apt to drop out, and his' past background is a key determ- inant in becoming a union member. Hence, the full impact of a right-to-work law is not felt until a considerable time after its passage when new workers, un- familiar with compulsory unionism and without a heritage of union participation, become a substantial portion of the labor market. ARGUMENTS that right-to-work laws are not harmful to organized labor in the United States are based on their lim- ited application, haphazard enforcement and the fact that there has not yet been enough time for their effects to become noticeable. This is hardly a sound basis for justifying existence of such laws, since the argument is dependent on the intervention of extenuating circumstanc- es, not the merits of the statutes them- selves. When the federal government permits right-to-work laws it in effect sanctions their inevitable long-range effect of weakening the union movement in the United States. Considering the demon- strated value of organized labor as a bar- gaining agent, an institution of social benefit for the worker and a balancing force to the economic power of big busi- ness, this is clearly an undesirable posi- tion. It is often argued that, while beneficial, unions nevertheless have not often exer- cised their power honestly and judicially and, thus ,right-to-work laws are neces- sary to protect the worker from his un- ion. It is undeniably true, as demonstrat- ed by the testimony before the McClel- lan committee a few years ago, that many unions have often abused their power. HOWEVER, right-to-work laws weaken unionism as a whole without specefic- ally restricting such abuses. A saner way to approach this problem would be to maintain compulsory unionism while de- vising specific regulations to ensure in- ternal union democracy and to attack corruption in the labor movement. By permitting right-to-work laws, Sec- tion 14B is potentially a serious danger to an effective labor movement in the United States. The coming effort to re- peal it should be supported. -JOHN MEREDITH Coordinated Calendaring UNCOORDINATED EDUCATION results in needless bungling, bumbling andM waste. There is little doubt that educational facilities must be utilized to a greater de- gree, and the solution seems to lie in year round operation either through a trimes- ter or quarter system. Yet the entire edu- cational system must be integrated to avoid conflicting schedules. For example, under the present unco- ordinated system high school graduates cannot take advantage of the University's attempt to meet the needs of a burgeon- ing student population through the tri- mester because of differences in calen- daring,, ATHOUGH THE UNIVERSITY has room for more high school graduates in its winter and summer sessions, the differences in calendaring prevent their enrollment. The result of these conflict- ing academic calendars is inefficient use of school facilities, overcrowding in the fall semester and wasting of time for the newly graduated high.school students. Opponents of a coodinated calendar say that the staggering of school schedules avoids the problem of having too many students out of school looking for em- ployment and recreation at the same time. Such assertions are unmitigated nonsense since such staggered calendars tend to overlap anyway, and a well thought out coordinated calendar can be even more effective in preventing student overflow. Ideally, with proper calendaring, a co- ordinated system, such as a trimester, will ': i0 ITrHA1-4 3r rN S((, '.. 0 VOICE, PEACE CORPS, CHALLENGE: The Birth of Activist Organizations EDITOR'S NOTE: In today's article, the second of a series, Philip Sutin, Grad, continues to trace the course of student activism on this campus since 1960. By PHILIP SUTIN WHEN STUDENTS returned to W campus in the fall of 1960, the activist movement took new and more energetic forms. The National S t u d e n t Association, which had acted without a direct mandate from its membership in the spring of 1960 in supporting Southern sit-in activity, got a mandate in the form of the "Stu- dent in the Total Community" policy declaration passed at its Minneapolis Congress, The declaration made it NSA policy to encourage students to participate in political action: "The student should seek with in- terest those problems which will lead to responsible involvement in social and political action." The motion was written by Alan Haber, a University student activ- ist who had left Ann Arbor to lead Students for a Democratic Society. In his regime, he trans- formed national SDS from a largely moribund student arm of the League for Industrial Democ- racy to the leading student lib- eral-radical organization. DAILY EDITOR Tom Hayden spent the summer in California, where he covered the Democratic national convention for The Daily. He spent time there observing Slate, a University of California campus liberal political party. His perception of the need for such an organization at the University was sharpened by discussions at the NSA Congress. In the fall, Hayden, David Gil- trow, Brian Glick, Kenneth Mc- I Eldowney, Alan Guskin, Robert Ross,- Sharon Jeffrey and several other liberal-activist students met and laid the groundwork for Voice, the University's campus po- litical party. "Hayden gave Voice immediate impetus. But there were a lot of exceptionally sharp, perceptive thinkers on the problem of edu- cation.sThere was, frankly, a lot of wrong within the administra- tion," Richard Magidoff, the last founder of Voice still on campus, explained recently. Both Voice membership and leadership were drawn from the same pool of people-editors and staff members of the Daily, mem- bers of the Political Issues Club, Challenge and the Young Demo- crats. THUS a central liberal-activist core formed. The Daily, led by Hayden and then by John Rob- erts, was its editorial spokesman. Voice members pressed legislation at SGC ,althcugh the record of Voice on SGC was generally weak- er than that of some of its key members acting elsewhere. By 1962, liberal activists were to lead Interquadrangle Council, Assem- bly House Council and the League. Voice organized itself in Sep- tember, 1960, drawing many fresh- men as a solid corps of members. Its first goal was to get its can- didates on SGC. The organiza- tion waged an aggressive cam- paign, electing candidates Lynn Bartlett, Philip Power and Mary Wheeler to SGC. Liberals gen- erally did well in that election as Voice won three of the five contested seats-the best percent- age the party has yet recorded in an election. Some 4700 students voted, indicating an upsurge in public confidence in SGC. Meanwhile, the local civil rights group, the Ann Arbor Di- rect Action Committee, ended in November almost nine months of weekly picketing of Kresge and Woolworth stores. A spokesman explained that picketing had to give way to "more immediate ac- tivities." These included distribut- ing leaflets in support of the state's anti-housing discrimina- tion Rule Nine, rallying public support for a University stand against discrimination, and orga- nizing a workshop in non-violence. AFTER a post-election period of inactivity, Voice launched its own civil rights campaign to raise food for dispossessed sharecroppers in Fayette County, Tennessee. Ne- groes had been evicted from their land and cut off from local credit for attempting to register and vote. Through the winter of 1960-61, all of Voice's energies were thrown into this project. Several Voice members were arrested in Tennes- see while on a food delivery mis- sion. The Daily gave ample publicity to the project, complete with an account of the arrests and a two- page spread by Hayden about the Fayette "freedom village." SGC BEGAN in the fall of 1960 the long, slow, time-consuming process of implementing its anti- membership selection discrimina- tion policy. After a month's debate, the council in December agreed to col- lect statements on membership se- lection practices from fraternities and sororities. The statements were to include membership claus- es of the organization's constitu- tion and an interpretation of its meaning. The documents were to remain secret and would be held by the Office of Student Affairs. The collection of statements was designed to obtain material to help implement the membership regu- lations. However, council could not agree on the significance and scope of its decision. Nothing was then done to insure collection of complete statements. CIVIL RIGHTS was confused with alleged crime and business policies in the most lively minor controversy of the 1960-61 school year. In January, 1961, the Union an- nounced that it was setting up a committee to rid the MUG of so-called "undesirables" who were engaged in "illegal activities" or making "excessive" noises. A special committee was estab- lished to investigate changing the tone of the money-losing Michi- gan Union Grill so that it would draw freer-spending fraternity- sorority types. Unfortunately, many of the persons who were considered un- desirables were Negroes. On March 9, 1961, the Union evicted a non- student, Joseph Harrison, from the MUG. He charged he was or- dered to leave simply because he was a non-student and implied racial discrimination was behind the undesirables policy. Harrison complained to the ing "sit-in" in the MUG. Even- tually, the juke box was removed as the first room was renovated to attract a classier clientele. The tactlessness of the Union drew the ire of The Daily and of some students who saw Ne- groes' civil rights being violated- here at the University, not far away in the South. Its high- handed banning of card playing and the activities of supervisory personnel led to ill-feeling. A byproduct of the controversy was the election of Daily reporter Michael Olinick, the staff mem- ber who covere l the undesirables incident, to the Union Board of Directors. It was the first time in many years that a non-retiring Union student staff member was not elected to the policy-making group. ON OCT. 14, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, candidate for president, spoke on the steps of the Mich- igan Union. He asked the several thousand students that waited un- til 2 a.m. to see him if they would 11 peace corps to Kennedy in Toledo the week before the election. After Kennedy's victory, the group prepared plans for a peace corps and held a weekend sym- posium on the subject. The Gus- kins drummed up support for the corps at a Washington conference over the 1960 Christmas vacation. ACWR working papers on the Peace Corps proved to be instru- mental in establishing the corps. Ironically, the University has nev- er been a major center in corps training, despite all the prelim- inary work done here. A NEW VEHICLE for spread- ing and broadening student con- cern with the world was also de- veloped in 1960-61. Several stu- dent leaders including Hayden at- tended the Challenge conference at Yale andi were determined to bring this speaker program to Michigan. Challenge was not just meant to be a lecture series. It featured important speakers on selected topics, but also included seminars for further study in the area. "As university students today ... we find that our environment does not enable us to understand these contemporary challenges . They remain strangely divorced from our sphere of concern. Stu- dents all over the country and at Michigan need and are demand- ing a program to help explore these issues with depth and vigor. Challenge is such a program, and the encouragement of an active response to them," its constitution declared. The Challenge of Civil Liberties was the first program in fall 1960. But it was not a total suc- cess in that semester. Evaluating the program, Glick, then assum- ing the Challenge spokesmanship, emphasized problems that were to haunt the group throughout its existence. The incisiveness and worthwhileness of the speakers were uneven. Some added little to the program. THE SEMINAR program in liv- ing units and elsewhere - the depth part of the project -- al- ways drew mild to apathetic re- sponses. Few students were will- ing to take the time or, do the added work involved in partici- pating in the seminars. They were not well publicized. Faculty mem- bers were not sure of their role. They 'were to be resource persons, but tended to play a more domi- nant role. However, members were opti- mistic that these problems could be overcome. In fact, student ac- tivists on campus were in many cases optimistic. They had rea- son, for the heydey of the stu- dent activist renaissance at the University was just around the corner. TOMORROW: The story of the student activists' greatest semester. ,1 'A .1 THE WORK OF THE University of Michigan Student Employes Union this fall had its origins in 1960 with the creation of Voice. In today's article, Philip Sutin Challenge, the Peace Corps and Daily, which ran the story, giving it prominent play for several days. THE UNION stood firm on its policy. It refused to more tightly define "undesirable," leaving the impression that discrimination did exist. Later, it installed a juke box and banned card playing, much to the ire of regular MUG patrons. Several activists associated with the Guild House, a haven for lib- erals and the religious center of the Congregational and related churches, held a monopoly-play- traces the development of Voice, civil rights movements. be willing to serve in a volunteer corps overseas. The response two weeks later was "Americans Committed to World Responsibility." The orga- nization was established by Alan and Judith Guskin, two graduate students active in Voice, and John and Margaret Dwyer, also gradu- ate students. The group did not campaign for a specific form of volunteer organization, but for some sort of "international civil service for the United Nations." It presented a petition for a 'p TODAY AND TOMORROW: Ambiguity Surrounds U.S. Aims in Viet Nam By WALTER LIPPMANN WE HAVE never had, at least so far as I know, any straight- forward explanation of why the administration persists in keeping iIts war aims uncertain. The cru- cial uncertainty is whether or not the administration intends to im- pose as yet undefined conditions which must be met before it will agree to a cease-fire and the be- ginning of negotiations for an can be no ceasefire, no end, that is to say, to the Viet Cong ter- rorism in South Viet Nam and to the American bombing in North Viet Nam, until Hanoi does-does what? Nobody knows what. Sec- retary of State Dean Rusk never says what. And supposing that Hanoi did show a willingness to "leave its neighbors alone";how would the administration know whether to believe Hanoi or how long to believe it? Bundy, like Rusk, would not spell out the preconditions. We are told that there are no signs from Hanoi that it wants a cease-fire followed by talks. To insist on this is to labor the ob- vious and it is beside the point. Considering the military situation in South Viet Nam, it would be surprising indeed if Hanoi did not think, or at least say, that it was in sight of a smashing victory. There can be no guarantee that Union, nor the non-aligned na- tions, nor the Holy See, nor the secretary general of the United Nations. If the administration clarifies its position on a cease-fire, it will be taking the first indispensable step toward emerging from our present near isolation in Southeast Asia into what could become mem- bership in a great diplomatic co- alition for peace and order. A diplomatic action on a suffi- cient scale to produce some re- sults will have to include indica- tions-through private channels, say of the Soviet Union and of France-of what kind of govern- ment might be set up in Saigon, and of the possible relations be- tween North and South Viet Nam which, according to the Geneva agreements of 1954, are notztwo sovereign nations but two zones of on nsvereign na~tion- T1