Moral Dave Beck – Unethical Scapegoat

Speaking at the 16th Convention of the United Automobile Workers Union in Atlantic City, Monsignor Higgins, who has agreed to serve on the public watchdog committee created by the UAW to advertise its integrity to the world, declared that organization had no reason to look down its collective nose self-righteously at the Becks and Hoffas in the labor movement.

Without answering the Monsignor directly, Walter Reuther has cast the same actors to play the same roles they spoke in successful UAW dramas of other seasons. The public-spirited citizens, the spiritual and community leaders who came forward in 1946 to umpire the controversy between the UAW and GM, who made up the citizens’ committee in the Chrysler strike in 1950, who advanced to testify on behalf of the guaranteed wage in 1955, and who were considering programs for the aged last year, are living testimonials to the morality of Walter Reuther and the UAW this year.

Not that these people are Charley McCarthys, moved into position to dress a IJAW window, or that there are interest-free funds for financially embarrassed UAW officers. Simple-minded first degree corruption, the ordinary money taint, and big shot manners are not a feature of the UAW anywhere. When the New York Times, the day before the UAW convention opened, reported that David Dubinsky of the International Ladies Garment Workers had told his staff that they would have to stop taking gifts of $100 and $500 bonds from employers, the IJAW staff and delegates, despite Monsignor Higgins, frizzled with self righteous amazement. To them, this, which the ILGWU and the Times seemed to regard as innocent play between company and union, was unspeakably obscene.

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