THE LABOR CONVENTION IN FLORIDA

This week in Tampa, Florida, the American Federation of Labor will probably commit suicide. Unless there is a miracle the dominant craft unions will expell the ten unions forming the Committee for Industrial Organization and by this stroke will split off the militant groups which are determined to organize the bulk of the working class. Labor solidarity may go out of the window, but the labor movement is far from being knifed in the back, as President Green of the A.F. of L. claims.

The skilled workers who compose two thirds of the membership of the Federation insist that the bulk of American labor be organized along craft union lines. They have a tremendous stake in prestige and wage differentials, both of which will be lost if vertical unions are set up to include in one group all the workers in an industry. The remaining third of the A.F. of L. have united into the Committee for Industrial Organization under John L. Lewis, and at this moment are locked in a struggle with the steel companies, the first battle in their campaign to bring all labor into industrial unions. Last winter the Executive Council of the Federation suspended the unions of the C.I.O. This week the Federation will probably expel the insurgents.

This schism in the ranks can ruin the A.F. of L., but not the labor movement. Vertical or industrial organization is most suited to modern conditions, where machinery is eliminating the need for special skill and makes all labor of about the same grade and value. If present developments continue, the C.I.O. may embrace all vertical unions, leaving the crafts to the Federation. While the horizontal unions now have some 2,500,000 members, there are 23,000,000 workers whom the A.F. of L. has failed to attract at all along craft lines, and presumably these men will join industrial unions. While the American Federation of Labor is left with one tenth of the eligible workers, the C.I.O. gets the res, and in view of the comparative sizes the desertion of the Federation is not the same as knifiing the whole labor front.

For his terrific gamble that the C.I.O. can organize the mass of workers John Lewis gets the highest praise. His success means that for the first time American labor will be united and strong enough to enforce its demands. When it tries to stop him by crying "wolf" the Federation lights the interests of the very group whom it is supposed to help.