Labor Must Clean Hands, Writer Riesel Tells Forum

If labor is to be a force in politics, it must clean its hands and stop thinking of itself as an oppressed group, Victor Riesel, syndicated Hearst columnist, told the Law School Forum on "Labor in Politics" last night at New Lecture Hall.

Riesel was the only non-labor representative on the four-man panel, which also included Gus Tyler, political head of David Dubinsky's ILGWU, Robert Segal, counsel for the Massachusetts Federation of Labor, and Al Barkan, chairman of the political division of CIO textile workers.

Riesel, arguing in defense of the Taft-Hartley Act, said that any organization which spends over 50 million dollars a year must stop thinking of itself as oppressed.

"I am not opposed to labor's entering into politics," he said, "but the unions must also realize that when they do so, they have to accept the responsibility for cleaning out the Marxists, Malenkovites, and crooks which infest some of their ranks."

Tyler, tracing the history of the labor movement in politics, said that only in the last seven years have the unions become a real force on the nation's political scene. "Robert Taft persuaded labor to real action. With the Taft-Hartley Act, labor felt it had to protect itself."

Taft-Hartley "Bombshell"

When questioned by moderator Louis L. Jaffe, professor of Law, as to labor's failure to arouse workers against the Taft-Hartley Act, Tyler replied that labor had yet to feel the dull impact of the 1947 law. "Taft-Hartley," he explained, "is sort of a time bomb which will only go off in an atmosphere of unemployment."

Segal, elaborating on the effect of the Taft-Hartley Act on labor, said that the act dramatized the need for the unions to defend collective bargaining through political means.

Barkan, commenting on his own personal experiences with the textile workers' Political Action Committee, said that "Labor is making progress in politics, but we've got a long way to go."