Eighty-three years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Dignity and a living wage Wednesday, September 11, 1974 News Phone: 764-0552 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104. General pardon: A betrayal SAY IT AIN'T SO Jerry! Say it ain't so. The announcement yesterday, that President Ford is now consider- ing a general pardon for all the fig- ures involved in the dark morass of crimes, arrogance, and deception known collectively as Watergate raises some chilling and horrifying questions: Where does it all end? To what lengths must men go before they will be prosecuted for their crimes? Rule by law and not by men -lauded so highly just one brief month ago - has never been so ser- iously threatened in our nation's his- tory. It is reprehensible - and appar- ently irreversible and uncontestable --that Ford pardoned his predeces- sor. The pardon seemed to be an ar- ticulation of the Spiro Agnew rule of law: if you're highly placed you'll be slapped on the wrists and then freed. Agnew had to plead guilty to a bill of particulars - all Nixon had to do was admit to "mistakes in judg- ment." According to yesterday's New York Times, Ford tried to pressure Nixon into admitting some guilt, but the former President balked and got his way. PRESIDENT FORD is now headed on a course which seems destined to deprive history of any solid ans- wers to the Watergate affair. If all the other Watergate figures are par- doned, the scheduled Watergate trials will never come to pass. And the answers will likely never emerge, for under the terms of the pardon Nixon will be allowed to destroy crucial tapes in three years, and in the meantime he will be allowed to deter- mine who has access to them - How long will it take until the story begins to change? How soon will we be told that Nixon was hound- ed out of office by his tradidtional enemies, the liberals and the press? The colossal arrogance reflected by the events of the last several days is staggering. Ford, who came to office promising openness and candor, has tarnished his one-month reputation severely. His action in pardoning Nix- on is as terrible as the worst excesses of the preceding administration. IN ONE SENSE an extension of the pardon is inevitable and perhaps just. It would be an absurd mockery to make John Ehrlichman and H. R. Hadleman stand trial while the man they served is set free. It makes no sense to go after the small fry, and it's hardly equal protection under the law. Still there is little we can do, for Ford has presented us with a fait ac- compli. He has acted within his legal perogatives. But this does not pre- vent us from raising our voice to join others in expressing our harsh- est disapproval for the ill-considered, morally repugnant actions taken. -STEPHEN SELBST Editor's note: This is the final seg- ed to send ment of a serial interview with Bob therefore in Alpert and Myra Wolfgang of Local 24 the increase of the Hotel and Restaurant Employes And that g Union. The Daily welcomes your cor- well. I don' respondence on this issue. Please ad- a shortagee dress all responses to "Letters to the union-negoti Editor." wouldn't be * * tals and do By MARNIE HEYN that people; Bob: There is something that Win The whole Schuler's would like to say, as other em- booming as1 ployers say too, "We really don't have ed if it wer to bargain with you." But it's not true. pensation th The fact is, and life itself tells you this, have been wherever the unions bargain wages go months. We' up, conditions improve, and the benefit sion here,< package goes up. And that's an import- 'what's going ant element which employers consistent- There's b ly deny, and which fact belies. I think cyclical boo we can even accede, for example, Win Myra: Wh Schuler's had a health package - so- going to bea called - right in the middle of the cam- Isn't ther paign, they said, "We're going to im- wage struct prove it."' hotel and r Myra: A couple of days ago, Hans I was worki Schuler came out here to announce flat rate out that, and some of the employes said, determined "I've been here since the place opened cial Secuit and I've never even seen Hans Schuler support me before. Why am I so lucky now?" But, the a Bob: Take premium pay for holidays. mined by m Win Schuler paid premium pay on La- paid Social bor Day, an enormous premium pay - hour deduc And they should. ported. I wo Bob: Of course they should. But they Social Secu never did it' before the union came hour - that knocking on their door. So, as the re- but I never sult of merely filing a petition, some my employe benefits have been won. Now, those Now, pres benefits can only be kept if it's put in be paying m black and white. As Myra says, "Will compensate you love me in December like you love practice of me in May?" jeopardize t But the point is they'll have to love employes w you if you have a signed, sealed docu- it, to emer ment that says, whether you like it or that law im not, we're wed. And that's the collective of people w bargaining agreement. It's interesting to lives? see the way developments take place in Bob: Well the kinds of benefits that accrue simply get totals on because of the presence of a union. if they don' Myra: I don't think that students here the option o who are part of the work force can pendently a divorce themselves from what's going it: but yes, on in society and in other social organiz- the employe ations. They can be critical of the labor Myra: Thi movement - and the labor movement the governm deserves and needs criticism - they the employ can be critical, and they are, of the gov- tips, the em ernment and the government deserves it shold be criticism, but you can't withdraw! as it is in th Now, I doubt if Win Schuler's would But in this c have been built in Ann Arbor, or there government, would have been a need for a Marriott off scot free Hotel, if it wasn't for the fact that the And that's UAW a long, long time ago had put up the National the struggle so that the working class raise he's finally became a middle class, and start- that's why 'U'studen By DAVID GARFINKEL PARIS - While nearly 40,000 students are getting ready for another fall term in Ann Arbor, 48 students from the Universities of Michigan and Wis- consin are passing a leisurely week at the Hotel Paris-Latin in preparation for their year. If it sounds like fun, this reporter can assure you that it is. But perhaps "leisurely" is the wrong word. For the students in the Michigan-Wisconsin Junior Year at Aix-en-Provence, life has become a mixed bag of tricks. Amidst wine, wild stories and bird calls in the middle of the night, things have taken on a fantastic aura. "Culture shock" immediately became a serious subject of conversation. Jet lag meant going into a trance at any given moment. But ours is an instant age. Many of the people had been to Europe before. After the jet lag had been slept out, and the culture shock had been talked out, (this took about 48 hours), everyone made a little pro- found discovery: "I'm here and the United States is over there." The realization then came that we are now in France for a year; there are real differences, to notice and to deal with. "I LIKE PARIS, and I'm surprised how friendly the people have been," Randy Nash, from Wisconsin, said. "But sometimes I feel like I'm walking on air." Everyone I interviewed was having a good time, but usually there was a minor complaint. Jill Enz- mann, from Michigan, said she found Paris fun and safe, and she liked the cafes. "But I miss my ten- their kids to college, and creased the enrollment and in business. goes for the professionals as t think there would be such of dentists if it weren't for ated dental plans. There such a shortage of hospi- ctors and all ,these things aspire to go into. economy wouldn't have been far as, Michigan is concern- en't for unemployment com- at the laid-off auto workers receiving for the last few d be in a real, real depres- and I have great fear of gto happen when it runs out. een a boom, but isn't it a im? en the comp runs out there's a problem here. e a problem in the whole ure as it exists presently for restaurant employes? When ing as a waitress, I paid a of my reported income, as by my employer, into So- y, which' will theoretically when I can't work any more. amount I get then is deter- ny income now. And I only Security on the 24 cent an tion that my employer re- uld have been willing to pay rity on my total tips per is, if I'd had a living wage- had the opportunity because er reported for me. umably in the future I will ore FICA on my income and for that. But doesn't the employers reporting tips he retirement years of those ho aren't able, as you put ge from the industry? Isn't poverishing a large number ho've worked hard all their , employers are supposed to tips from the employe. But t do that, the employe has f reporting that income inde- nd paying tax and FICA on the way the law is written, loses for years to come. Js is the only industry where vent is picking up the tab for er. On the declaration of ploye pays the full amount; matched by the- employer, e case of all other industries, ase, it's only matched by the so the employer is getting why Win Schuler belongs to Restaurant Association, be- saving money from it, and his employes should have their own association. Is Ann Arbor notoriously bad as far as wages go? Myra: Yes. We found wages here that we've never found in Detroit. There are people working here for a dollar an hour,, inviolation of the minimum wage law. Of course, until a few years ago, the law excluded hotel and restaurant employ- ers, and shops that had fewer than 15 employes, or weren't involved in inter- state commerce. All of which goes to show, without a union or a legal require- ment, the employers will not pay a de- cent wage. What's the pattern of unionization in cities like this? Myra: Well, the International Union has been successful in some college towns, and place like New Haven, San Francisco-Berkeley. But we don't have a pre-arranged pattern; we go where we're invited. Who works at Schuler's? Are they mostly students? Bob: About thirty or forty percent are students. About the same percentage of people who signed cards were students. Myra: Most of the employes, though, who aren't students are young, of student' age. What issues affect them most? Is it wages? Bob: The most important issue really is to feel that you have something to say in terms of relating to your employ- er on an equal basis. Myra: But a lot of them have specific grievances: Why am I not given a fair station? Why does one waitress have eight customers when another has 16? They feel that often these things are discriminatory and want to have some- one to take it up and point that out. Questions come up, too, of upward mobility in the industry - someone has been a waiter and wants to become a bartender, someone who's worked as a busboy or room service clerk and wants to be a waiter, or someone wants a certain day off, or having some kind of scheduling. It's not only a question of human dig- nity, but one of real income as well, be- ca'ise all those things determine how much money you're going to take home at the end of the week. What sort of resistance to unionization do von get from employes? What sort of things are they afraid of? Are these reasonable fears? Myra: What they're afraid of, first of all, is not the union. They are afraid of incurring the employers wrath, and therefore losing their job. And I think the employer is successful in many in- stances of exploiting those fears, by sav- ing, "If the union comes in, there will be mandatory fines and assessments, and you'll have to go on strike." These charges can all be answered, but you have to write 90 page leaflets to answer them. There is no such thing as a mandatory fine or assessment. The law prohibits that. It says, "There shall be no increase in dues, in initiation fees, in reinstatement fees, without a. vote of the membership." I think the other enemy, in the Tense that we are fighting, is that 'many peo- ple don't care what happens because they don't plan on staying in their jobs forever, all they need is the money to get through school. They're thoroughly mobile; that's one of our greatest prob- lems in organizing the industry. Bob: Something else the employer does, he says to somebody who's only going to be working there five or six months, "Listen, why should you pay dues; you're not really going to be able to enjoy the benefits., It's really not in your interests to join a union because a union indicates a certain kind of contin- uity, a commitment." Very often people fall for this line- and it's really a false line - because very often students find that they're go- ing to need this kind of employment lat- er when they move from place to place. 'And the advantages of having a union card - take for example, somebody working in a restaurant here moves to another part of the country, and that card is an entre, an introduction, it's knowing that you can go to a strange place and find a friend there, and one who will protect you on the job. Myra: It's not a reasonable fear, but something else employers play on is, "The union's going to charge exhorbitant dues. Often they say, "You're paying union dues to keep the union officers in their black Cadillacs." Nobody on our staff - including me - drives a black Cadillac, or any other color either. Win Schuler did me the incredible kindness of saying that people had to pay dues so that I could indulge my taste for Picasso's on the wall of my office. How many Picassos do you. have in your office. Bob: I have three prints that I got during a special Marlboro sale for a couple of bucks apiece. Myra: And I have three original Wolf- gangs and one Van Gogh print. And how much dues do union employes pay? Myra: Five dollars a month. And the real reason Win Schuler's doesn't want a union is that the union will cut his love- ly profits. That's it, and not that they've been one big happy family. f n year Kissinger image tarnished TE REPUBLICAN administration which has brought to life such great phrases as the ever popular "stonewalling," the pizzazzy "inoper- ative" and the all-time, heavy duty favorite, "executive privilege" has spawned yet another misguided term, "destabilization." This term, coined by William Col- by, director of the Central Intelli- gence Agency, when applied to the coup d'etate in Chile means active U. S. participation in and encourage- ment of the right-wing overthrow of the legitimately elected Marxist gov- ernment of Salvador Allende. Accord- ing to the Colby testimony recently uncovered, the United States author- ized in excess of $1 million to defeat Allende in the general election and to bribe members of the Chilean Senate to reject his election. The polite sobriquet "destabiliza- tion" also means active United States support of murder and suppression. A5OF THIS writing, not one State Department official has denied the Colby testimony, preferring, in- stead, to claim that the United States does not engage in covert ac- tivities and adopted a "hands-off" policy towards Chile. It is not only the English language Editorial Staff DANIEL BIDDLE Editor-in-Chief JUDY RUSKIN and REBECCA WARNER Managing Editors KENNETH FINK ................... Arts Editor MARNIE HEYN .............. Editorial Director SUE STEPHENSON...............Feature Editor CINDY HILL ................ Executive Director STAFF WRITERS: Prakash Aswani, Gordon At- cheson, Laura Berman, Barb Cornell. Jeff Day, Della DiPietro, William Heenan, Steve Hersh, Jack Krost, Andrea Lily, Mary Long, Jeff Lux- enberg, Josephne Maircotty, Beth Nssen, Cheryl Pilate, Sara Rimer; Stephen Seibst, Jeff Soren- son, Paul Terwilliger. Sports Staff MARC FELDMAN Sports Editor GEORGE HASTINGS Executive Sports Editor ROGER ROSSITER .... Managing Sports Editor JOHN KAHLER........Associate Sports Editor Business Staff which has taken a beating in this little escapade south of the border, but the reputation and announced intentions of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as well. Kissinger chaired the meetings which decided the final use of the funds. And though State Department sources now point out that no action can be taken without the full and unanimous consent of the five voting members of which Kissinger is one, this does not in the least diminish Kissinger's guilt. His vote could have prevented the blood-letting. Can anyone seriously say that the action would have been undertaken if Kissinger, the secre- tary of state, had wanted it other- wise? WHAT THE CHILEAN revelations lay bare is the rather preverse Kissinger conception of foreign poli- cy. It is a conception based on power politics by the big and the powerful, which brush aside the internal and domestic concerns of nations which have little pull in the power broker- ages of the world. Power politics have borne some bitter fruit. It was power politics which embroiled the United States in Vietnam. It was power politics which caused the Dominican inter- vention. And it was power politics which fueled the present economic crises. Add to this indiscriminate use of power, the politics of personality starring the dashing Mr. K. and the great foreign affairs advances which the defenders of the Nixon-Kissinger- Ford triumverate are so proud of trumpeting stands revealed as fraudulent, dishonest, and counter- productive to the cause of peace. Such a nakedly pragmatic foreign policy is near criminal when prac- ticed by a super-power which must bear the responsibility of power with a set of well-practiced principles. It is ironic that while Kissinger will not intercede with the Russians over the fate of Soviet Jewry, he is more than willing to subvert the electoral pro- cess of Chile. Principles, the Chilean adventure reveals, are not Henry "Peace is At Hand" Kissinger's forte. --DAN BORUS is abroad begi speed bike," she said. Tom McMurtrie, from Michigan, said he was enjoying himself, although he thought the prices at the cafes were outrageous. Eventually one can't help but make comparisons to life back home. "I wandered around Notre Dame (a cathedral in the Latin Quarter) which is sort of like the Diag - a lot of North Africans and French- men hanging out ther," noted Amy Dishelle, from Michigan. "People dancing, playing music, hanging out - very fun!" "THE STREET people here are a lot crazier: less mellow and more aggressive than in Ann Arbor," Tom McMurtrie said. One student said she felt that the city "pulsates," and almost everyone mentioned the very fast pace of Paris. Of course, there are adjustments to make, and some are difficult. For some, food and its logical conse- quence are in this category. Everybody smiles when they bite into the hard crust of a breakfast tartine beur- ree (real French bread, someone says with a contin- ental air), but by lunchtime many have backtracked by showing up at one 'of the five McDonalds' here. If only to warn future travellers, it must be told that later on one finds out that many of the toilets do not have seats (you're supposed to squat), and to make things worse, French toilet paper is the rough equivalent of American waxed paper. ter a day of sightseeing at Chartres, the group's bus got stuck in a half-hour traffic jam comparable to the everydaye "rush hour" around dozens of American cities. The tour guide, a Parisian, apologized to the group at great length and then explained that Les Grandes Vavances, the month of August when every- one who has a car leaves Paris, were just today coming to an end. In short, this traffic jam, so com- monplace to urban Americans, was an Annual Event in France. On another tour, the guide pointed out Paris' only skyscraper near 'the Military College. After it was built, he explained, popular pressure against it be- came so great that all -future plans for new. skyscrap- ers were quickly dropped. Outside San Francisco, this type of popular influence in the United States is prac- tically unheard of. AFTER AWHILE, the beauty of this city loses pre- cedence to its less pleasant aspect: the constant hustle and the incredible expense. The girls get tired of be- ing hassled. The guys get ,tired of really having to hassle the girls to get any attention. And so it's likely that this week will end with a mixture of sadness and relief. By the middle of next week everyone will be trying to make a new home in Aix, birthplace of Cezanne, in the south of France. Tim Dickensin, from Michigan, has already been there and describes the old Provencal town as "an Europeanized Ann Arbor." Most of us are looking forward to that, you know, because maybe you can't go home again, but you always keep trying. IN FACT, many customs and different here, but it's hard to sheltered 'tourist' role, except in standards are very notice, being in a a rare situation. Af- i Letters to The Daily cle ricals To The Daily: ABOUT TWO months ago I wrote a letter to the newspaper explaining why I felt unioniza- tion was just as important to myself as a long term employe of the University as to new cler- icals. At that time I did not endorse any one union. How- ever, as the election draws clos- er it is imperative for all cler- icals to decide what is the best course of action for themselves as well as the group as a whole. The choices are: CCFA-UAW, AFSCME, or no union. Growing up in a labor union famil T have ha the onnnnrta- have a strong local run by the members themselves. After hearing from both UAW and AFSCME, I have come to the conclusion that we will have that kind of a local with UAW but not with AFSCME. I feel this way because right after UAW was invited on campus by members of CCFA (Concerned Clericals For Action) AFSCME started broadcasting that they were the union for public em- ployes and UAW had no busi- ness being on this campus (re- gardless of how clericals felt about it). Also AFSCME is always ad- vertising what nod w me inv undemocratic their local is run. THE WAY THE campaigns have been managed convinces me that UAW would be our best choice. AFSCME hired trained public relations people to come in and run the campaign and they hired about twenty student organizers to do soliciting. We have all seen their literature telling us how much support they have from clericals on campus. Maybe this is so but the people that are seen con- ducting meetings are being paid to tell us how great %FSCME is. I wonder if these same people had hen offered inh h TiAW. sent clericals. Because CCFA-UAW is a grass roots organization with strong local participation, many clericals are afraid that ]JAW will not give us strung enough support at the bargaining 'able. However, what many people do not realize is that tie reason that UAW is not on this campus with twenty paid organizers, etc., is because CCFA request- ed them not to. CCFA waited to run their own campaign and UAW has been very coopera- tive in helping out where neces-. sary. When the time comes for serious bargaining UAW will he there tn heln nur ncalg et what beef To The Daily: MR. KAHLER'S editorial in today's Daily berates us for consuming too much beef. He broods over the fact that "steaks and hamburgers are synonymous in the popular mind with meat." Several col- umns to the right Mr. Warren informs the reader that "rodeo has little bearing on modern American life." How can the role of cowboys have "outlived its purpose in society" in view of the "American addiction to beef?" I guess that-it all de- .r_ n a - , tk