Rising Tide

St. Louis' Bill Sentner is a labor leader who has never made any bones about his politics; he is a Communist and proud of it. He is a general vice president of the C.I.O.'s Communist-dominated United Electrical Workers and president of its District 8.

In 1936, Sentner organized a local at St. Louis' Emerson Electric Manufacturing Co. The following year he led the plant's 2,000 workers in a 53-day sit-down strike, the second longest sit-down in U.S. labor history. But when handsome Stuart Symington (now Secretary of the Air Force) took over as Emerson's president, labor relations began to settle down. Symington and Sentner sized each other up; each found the other a forthright, levelheaded man of his word. Working together, they put into effect a successful labor-management plan and a profit-sharing program. Emerson, swollen to 11,000 workers, was one of the few big plants in St. Louis to come through the war without labor trouble.

At war's end, however, anti-Communist sentiment among the U.E.'s rank & file began to rise. Sentner's own Local 1102 began to turn against him, and his right to hold his district office was challenged in the courts. After the Taft-Hartley law was passed, he was asked if he intended to resign and allow the union to comply with the law. "That decision," he replied, "is up to the membership of this union." Last week, Local 1102 made its decision. By a vote of 950-2, Bill Sentner--still hanging on to his district and international offices --was expelled for life from the local he organized.

The anti-Communist tide was rising in other unions. At a convention of Abram Flaxer's red-rimmed United Public Workers, a group of delegates claiming to represent 10,000 federal, state and municipal employees declared themselves "fed up with the leftwing, anti-C.I.O. policies" of Flaxer and bolted the union.

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