Protectionism's New Ally: Labor

FREE TRADE UNDER FIRE

THE chorus of pleas for higher tariffs and more import quotas on foreign goods always rises in volume when the roar of U.S. assembly lines slackens a bit. The current business slump is no exception. And now the chorus has swelled with the addition of some new voices: labor unions, long among the staunchest supporters of freer trade. For the first time, when the conservative, protectionist Nation-Wide Committee on Import-Export Policy met last week in Washington, some 20 labor unions were represented. Breaking away from basic A.F.L.-C.I.O. policy, which remains free trade, the unions joined the committee's trade-association membership in recommending legislation to the new Congress to encourage higher tariffs and more import quotas.

The stand of the newly protectionist unions is put simply and forcefully by Amalgamated Clothing Workers President Jacob Potofsky, an oldtime free trader himself until recently: "Do we have to stand by idly while our jobs are destroyed? Do our cutters have to continue to cut fabrics made in Japan?" Potofsky's answer: a resounding "No." The clothing workers voted to take direct action against imported goods, and next month the A.C.W. Executive Board plans to pass on an order to their members not to cut any Japanese-made fabrics received by a manufacturer after May 1.

The Textile Workers Union has argued to the U.S. Tariff Commission that tariff walls ought to be raised against foreign cloth. The United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers International has organized a "Buy American" campaign aimed at retailers and the public, distributes handbills before some stores that sell chiefly imported headgear. Last year the 1,200-member local of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in Roanoke, Va. struck the Kenrose Manufacturing Co. Inc., which had just opened a new plant in Ireland. The union won a company agreement to set aside part of its Irish profits to compensate workers for any wage loss resulting in the Virginia plant after two years of international operation.

Worried about the inflow of foreign electronic parts, the big International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers called upon Congress and the President not only to curb imports but also to limit the flow of U.S. capital into manufacturing overseas. Fortnight ago the Chicago Brotherhood of Electrical Workers went even farther. It notified its 137 employers that after May 1 its 23,000 members would refuse to handle any electronic parts imported from Japan. The Pottery Workers, the Boilermakers and the Carpenters unions are currently weighing anti-import actions.

Some of the cries against foreign competition are louder than the pinch warrants. Only 52,600 men's suits were imported into the U.S. in 1960, v. some 20 million turned out by U.S. factories. Imports in 1960 of wool pants totaled 2.1 million v. 14.2 million made in the U.S. Moreover, from October 1958 to October 1960, the number of production workers employed in the U.S. coat and suit industry increased from 94,000 to 102,900 despite rising imports, and the workers' average weekly hours worked and total earnings increased as well. Though imports of Japanese and Hong Kong cotton shirts have risen in eight years from 200 dozen to 1,900,000 dozen, U.S. shirtmakers are far from losing their shirts, last year produced some 26 million dozen. The competition has benefited the consumer: cottonmakers are stepping up research on wrinkle-resistant and soil-resistant finishes, providing U.S. buyers with better shirts than ever before.

The textile industry has a legitimate complaint when it comes to the price of cotton. Since cotton prices are supported by the U.S., domestic mills must pay 6-c- more a pound for U.S. cotton than buyers abroad pay for the same product. As a result, last year's imports of yarn leaped 14 times above 1959, increasing from 1,000,000 lbs. to 14,216,000 lbs. last year.

In the face of the rising protectionist cry, President Kennedy last week gave his implicit endorsement to a new solution. He ordered release of the summary of a report being prepared by the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce which argues that "remedies other than import restrictions should be available" in the form of "adjustment assistance." (The Nation-Wide Committee on Import-Export Policy's protectionist members promptly denounced the plan.) Under the plan, industries would be required to prove that imports--and not inefficiency--were the specific cause for falling sales and employment. Where the need was real, the Government would make available longterm, low-interest loans to modernize old machinery or help an industry with obsolete products shift into a new line and retrain its workers. At its worst, such a program could turn into a handout to inefficient or obsolete industries. At its rigorously applied best, it might go far toward calming the rising protectionism without sacrificing the cause of free trade.

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