Page 4-Tuesday, January 10, 1978-The Michigan Daily
Cities await new urban plan
~br Midbian EhaiI
Eighty-Eight Years ofJEditorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Val. LXXXVIII, No. 82 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
#
Violence wi1 1preven a
speedy UMW agreement
HE FIVE-WEEK long strike by warned after this weekend's even
the United Mine Workers was the outbursts are a sign that work
iarred by. its first bout with death and and management alike are frustrat
violence last weekend. A retired that no end to the walkout is in sig
iiner, 65-year-old Mack Lewis, was Negotiations between the UMW a
';shot to death in Kentucky on Friday, the Bituminous Coal Operato
jnd officials in West Virginia, Ken- Association broke off December
raucky, Illinois and Indiana reported an and the two parties are only just n
/ 4psurge in strike-related damages and beginning to publicly express desir
-arrests. for renewed contract talks.
The mine strike, which has been "This senseless act of violence is ft
,.relatively uneventful since it began ther evidence of the need for the c
"TDecember 6, now looks as if it is operators to return to the bargaini
+eading toward a series of dangerous table in a meaningful effort," Mill
confrontations. said of the Kentucky killing.
;7 Unions learned much earlier in this Leaders of both the UMW and t
;century that violence could be of no use Coal Operators Association must c4
1 to them in settling labor disputes, as for an immediate end to escalati
have management officials. Van- violence and must arrange for serio
E dalism and vicious outbreaks only and fruitful contract talks within t
lower the public's opinion of the two week.
opposing interests, and poison the air Death and destruction will n
: at bargaining tables. negotiate a new contract for mi
' But as UMW President Arnold Miller workers and operators.
Stash the cream pie,
grandma, it's a bust!
w g ,
TATE HEALTH OFFICIALS may to the churches and block clubs is to
x; t be about to discover a limit to the stall regulation kitchens in which
tolerance of Michigan residents for food would be prepared.
bans and regulations that have As one Iona County health offici
removed everything from cyclamate- put it, they are concerned abo
1 sweetened sodas to flammable toddler "hazardous foods" like meats ai
r' togs from the shelves, cream pies.
In their zealousness to find things to The statistics are not available, b
protect us from, health officials 'have it would seem highly unlikely that
set thei sights -upon 'one of the few astronomical ;number .of people ha
small-town institutions still in practice- been poisoned. by contaminated crea
t and singled it out for unnecessary regu- pies from pot-luck dinners. Do t
lation. They are trying to abolish the health officials who are handing dov
"pot-luck" supper. such regulations reserve the right to
Pot luck suppers have been with us spect all kitchens, and the right to ra
since the first Thanksgiving. It is as en- any suspected pot luck dinners and ha
grained in our society as the bake sale, away all the participants?
the bazaar, the fund-raising dinner-to Where were these same health
say nothing of the family reunion where ficials when Michigan cattle were beir
,an aunt could always be relied on for contaminated with PBB? Is the heal
the steaming apple crumb cakes. Now department stepping up their enforc
this, the most time-honored technique ment of other regulations merely
of getting everyone to pitch in, could atone for the PBB debacle, and in tu
very well go the way of artificial sweet- polish theirown images?
eners. Health officials should concentra
;4 Health officials, concerned about, their much-needed efforts in t
possible .food contamination from general direction of some of Michigan
having too many chefs, have decided to more pressing health problems, al
":enforce a regulation requiring all food keep their fingers out of grandma
for public consumption to be prepared cream pie. (Is nothing sacred a
only in licensed kitchens. Their advice more?)
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By T. D. ALLMAN
Pacific News Service
NEW YORK - Nearly a year
after Jimmy Carter's inaugura-
tion, urban America is still wait-
ing - with less and less patience
- for the President to fulfill his
campaign pledge of "a massive
effort" to achieve the "revitaliza-
tion of our cities."
While the President has tended,
with varying degrees of
imagination and success, to the
problems of energy, foreign
policy and federal
reorganization, he has so far
failed even to adopt a national
urban policy, let alone implement
one.
"THE FEAR is that Jimmy
Carter's urban supporters are
going to be cruelly disappointed
by the man they elected to the
White House," says Melvin King,
one of Boston's representatives in
the Massachusetts legislature:
"A Republican president told
New York City to drop dead,"
adds Felix Rohatyn, senior part-
ner of the prestigious Lazard
Freres investment firm, and
chairman of New York's Munic-
ipal Assistance Corporation.
"Now a Democratic president is
presiding over the funeral."
The disenchantment with the
President's urban leadership ex-
tends from small city councils
through executive suites atop
corporate skyscrapers into the
halls of Congress. "I now have
the feeling," a senior congres-
sional aide recently said, "that
what our urban problems really
are going to have to wait for is
another president. Some people
call it ineptness in the White
House. It looks more and more
like callousness to me."
EVEN THE Democratic
leadership is disturbed. "The
President is promising tax cuts at
the very moment we need major
funding," comments Rep. Henry
Reuss (D-Wis.), chairman of the
powerful House Committee on
Banking, Finance and Urban Af-
fairs. "You can't solve urban
problems by making the righ
richer and the poor poorer."
Urban votes - often those of
poor or non-white inner-city resi-
dents - elected Jimmy Carter
president by providing a narrow
margin of victory in dozens of
close state races. Why has the
President so far failed to satisfy
this key constituency?
Close observers of the Admini-
stration's failure so far to evolve
a national urban strategy cite
several major reasons. The most
important is that many urban ac-
tivists increasingly doubt that the
President - with his rural,
business and Southern
background - really grasps the
nature of the problem that cities
and their disadvantaged citizens
face.
"THE PRESIDENT has an ab-
stract commitment to helping
cities," one of Jimmy Carter's
own domestic advisers in the
White House recently observed.
"But does he haves any visceral
understanding of cities' needs?
Can he relate to urban people in a
human way? This remains to be
proven.'"
Others absolve the President,
and blame the White House staff
itself and bad policy planning at
the Cabinet level, notably in the
Department of Housing and Ur-
ban Development ( HUD ), for the
failure to devise the creative new
national urban policy the
President has promised, but so
far failed to deliver. Criticism in
Washington centers on HUD
Secretary Patricia Harris and on
the President's senior domestic
policy adviser in the White
House, Stuart Eizenstat.
All three factors recently con-
verged in a traumatic session
over urban policy in the White
House. For months the Presi-
dent's Urban and Regional Policy
Group - chaired by Secretary
Harris - has been working on a
series of comprehensive urban
policy proposals. While Harris
was charged with formulating
policy proposals, Eizenstat was
given the task of assuring close
liaison between the President and
the various government depar-
tments preparing the policy
report, which was called "Cities
and People in Distress."
AS ALL participants in the
policy process concede, the
report itself now is in even great-
er distress than the cities and
people it proposed to help. In the
end, President Carter rejected
the urban policy advice of his own
advisers - and sent them back to
the drawing boards to come up
with a new set of proposals before
March 15, when the President has
promised at last to unveil his ur-
ban policy.
Following the disagreements at
the White House, many Admini-
stration urban specialists are dis-
pirited, and the task of for-
mulating an effective urban
policy seems even more difficult
than before.
The proposed urban policy
draft itself, most experts -who
have read it agree, was flawed in
both structure and vision, while
nonetheless containing many in-
novative proposals, ranging from
an urban development bank to
direct federal assistance for
neighborhood revitalization pro-
grams.
WHAT SEEMS to have sealed
the report's fate, however, was
its price tag, which made it clear
that effective urban solutions
cannot come cheap. If all the
policy proposals had been adop-
ted, they would have cost an ex-
tra $8-12 billion a year - and
made any Administration plans
for a tax cut academic.
Voicing the general reaction in
the White House, one Carter aide
was reported to tell urban policy
planners, "Don't tell me we'll
spend more money all around
and then we'll call it an urban
policy." Administration sources
say the President has ordered the
planners to limit themselves to $2
billion in new funding proposals
- a figure many advocates of a
national urban policy dismiss as
tokensim at best.
Following the confrontation at
the White House, Secretary
Harris is being derided as an in-
competent by some, and
described as a victim of presi-
dential penuriousness by others.
Eizenstat, for his part, clearly
failed to prepare either the Presi-
dent or his urban advisers for the
gap of at least $6 billion separa-
ting their differing views on what
an urban policy should cost -
and therefore be.
THE GAP is immense not onlyl
in financial terms, but philosophi-
cally too. With his faith in Zero
Based Budgeting, managerial ef-
ficiency and balanced budgets,
the President operates on the
assumption, as one New England
city official recently put it, "that
you can solve problems by man-
aging them better, not necessari-
ly by spending more money on
them."
"Saying you can't solve prob-
lems by throwing money at them
is like saying you can't put out
fires by pouring water on them,"
counters Paul Du Brul, co-author
of The Abuse of Power, a study of
the New York fiscal crisis.
Adds Felix Rohatyn, who as
chairman of New York City's
"Big MAC" has reduced, through
spending cuts, the city's short-
term indebtedness from $6.2
billion to only $170 million in'two
years: "We've cut away all the
fat. From now on, we'll only
balance the city budget and pay
off debts by cutting away New
York's muscles, bones and vital
organs. We need money for urban
development, but the Admini-
stration hasn't even taken
welfare off our backs."
FOR THE time being, at least,
the President also has his defend-
ers. They say Carter rejected the
urban policy report not because
he doesn't care about cities, but
because he wants more imagina-
tive solutions for them. They add
that the present $2 billion limit on
additional funding is there to
provide discipline in fiscal plan-
ning, and predict the ultimate
policy will be much more gener-
ous.
"The President wants a for-
ward-looking urban policy that
makes cities part of the solution,
not the problem," says Nicholas
R. - Carbone, majority leader of
the Hartford City Council. "I
think the President was right to
ask for a better urban policy, and
that it's up to all of us to show him
the direction our cities can go.
Between now and March 15 we
will be separating the urban pros
from the urban amateurs."
At least until then, however,
Jimmy Carter will be in an odd
position for an activist president
- a leader who has rejected a
policy, but propounded none; a
leader who proposes to spend less
while city problems deepen; a
president with an ethic of admini-
strative reform who so far has
failed to propose even the feder-
alization of welfare.
After so many lost months of
paper shuffling and disputes
within the Administration,
President Carter's March policy
statement may be his last chance
not just to propose national solu-
tions.for the urban crisis, but to
prove there is not a leadership
crisis too.
"
The author compiled this
year-end report on America's
urban crisis folio wing a four-
month series of interviews
with key urban leaders. He is a
contributing editor of Har-
per's and a fellow of the Ford
Foundation 's Third Century
America project.
Letters should be typed and limited
to 400 words. The Daily reserves the
right to edit letters for.length and
grammar.
Labor's losses on
First of Two Parts bargain seriously with AFSCME Local 158
The year 1976-77 was a disaster for campus resulted in a strike, management began,
labor. University management took on the vicious strike-breaking campaign, includir
campus unions one after another and defeat- massive scab-herding, use of police to assau
ed each - UAW Local 2001, GEO, AFSCME AFSCME picket lines, and finally firingo
Local 1583 and the AFL-CIO Trades Council. suspending AFSCME militants for defendir
Fortunately, none of the defeats were irre- their union against these attacks. A yea
versible. Clericals and GSA's are reorganiz- earlier, in UAW Local 2001, managemen
ing their unions and making good progress. collaborated with the UAW bureaucrats,t
AFSCME Local 1583 is coming back to life, attempt to "get" clerical militant
The Trades Council has maintained a strong Management illegally attempted to suppres
organization and will be able to fight again. campaign literature in union election
Our biggest battles lie ahead. refused to recognize cledricals' elected repr
83
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................................. ................ ..'...... ... ...."::'-
Editorials which appear without a by-line represent a con-
Y sensus opinion of the Daily's editorial board. All other editorials,
as well as cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals who sub-
mit them.
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ObN'T WoSnM, JMM.
UNDER COWRL Wd
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a4 VACT, ? MOST PEOM
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This series was jointly written by the
AFSCME Committee for a Workers'
Government, Clericals for a Democratic
Union and the Committee for a Militant
GEO.
In the aftermath of last year's defeats,
campus labor urgently needs a new perspec-
tive. The undersigned organizations believe
that this new perspective should include the
following points: 1) Oust the labor
bureaucrats in all the campus unions. 2)
Promote union democracy and militant lead-
ership in all the unions. 3) Organize the unor-
ganized campus workers. 4) Amalgamate the
campus unions into a single statewide, cam-
pus-wide union. 5) Promote militant strikes to
prevent layoffs, attrition and speedup, and to
win a shorter work week with no loss in pay, a
full and unlimited cost-of-living allowance, a
strong campus-wide seniority system, union
control of hiring, recruitment and training,
and other key demands. 6) Promote a work-
ers' party based on the trade unions. 7) For
workers' democracy and a workers' govern-
ment to expropriate the capitalists' resources
and build a workers' economy rationally
planned to meet human needs. Through link-
ing the struggles of campus workers to each
other and to the general labor movement, the
undersigned organizations pledge themselves
to attempt to carry out this perspective.
CAMPUS WORKERS and students must
begin by asking themselves, why did campus
sentatives, stalled grievances, etc.
Management's union-busting does not an-
swer our question, however, but only poses it.
U of M management, like any management,
makes its living from attacking workers. The
real question is, why were the campus unions
The Labor
Scene
Part One
unable to defeat management's attacks last
year?
IN THE CASE of UAW Local 2001, GEO
and AFSCME 1583, the blame lies primarily
with the bureaucratic misleadership of the
campus
Democratic Union (CDU) to leadership. In
retaliation, the UAW functionaries moved to
paralyze the Local, hoping to pin the blame on
the militant leadership. They overturned the
membership vote, on bylaws, and overturned
or cancelled elections of union officers.
During the life of the first contract, the UAW
labor fakers refused to take even one
grievance to arbitration, nor did they support
the-militant contract demands and strike
preparations needed to win a better contract.
They preferred to destroy the union, rather
than lose control of it. While the UAW honchos
failed to defeat either the democratic bylaws
or the militant CDU leadership, clericals be-
gan to despair of ever breaking the bureau-
cratic stranglehold. By a paper-thin margin,
clericals voted to decertify the union in
August 1976. Now the Organizing Committee
for Clericals (OCC) must rebuild the union
from the ground up. ,
In GEO the situation was not much better.
In the fall of 1976 both the incumbent GEO
leadership and the so-called "Left Caucus'
opposition became hung up on appearing
"respectable" to University management,
and the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT) bureaucrats. This fatal weakness led
the official leadership to attempt to evade the
head-on collision with management needed to
win significant gains. Instead of organizing
for a strike to enforce strong contract deman-
ds, they stalled, hoping management would
reward their "reasonableness." The "Left
Caucus" vacillated, letting itself be red-
baited into silence. Management saw the
weakness in the leadership's grovelling
before it and kicked the union in the head;
ultimately refusing to bargain or sign a con-
tract with the union at all. The GEO lead-
ership then wasted the Spring 1977 term,
because it was afraid to gear up for a joint
strike with AFSCME.
The sad story of AFSCME Local 1583 is
also well known. The right-wing bureaucratic
faction was prepared to accept any miserable
contract offer management might make in
the first months of 1977. It adamantly opposed
striking and did its best to cripple the strike,
once it happened. The fake "left-wing"
bureaucratic faction wanted a small strike in
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