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Jack Wilson

Claherty Hits at Akron Rebels

(May 1935)

From The New Militant, Vol. I No. 20, 4 May 1935, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

AKRON, O., May. 1. – The betrayal of the rubber workers by the American Federation of Labor bureaucracy had three significant results this week which are continuing the demoralization that set in after the sell-out agreement was foisted recently on the big three locals here.

1. The India Tire Co., which has a closed shop of the A.F. of L. union, locked out two hundred workers employed there when the union made wage demands last Saturday, thus continuing the capitalist offensive against organized labor in the tire industry.
    
2. Coleman C. Claherty, A.F. of L. rubber organizer, who acted with William Green to railroad the agreement on the rubber workers, began a terrific red scare in the locals in an effort to intimidate progressives who are trying to organize definitely against him.
    
3. Less than ten percent of the workers in the Goodyear union appeared at the Sunday meeting indicating how the workers are falling away from the union because of their disappointment.
    

“India Tire” Workers Fight Back

The India rubber workers have set up strong picket lines around the factory aided by the Mogadore Unemployed League and have refused to permit even company officials to enter the plant.

Although normally 400 workers are employed at the plant, seasonal decline in the industry reduced the personal to half that number.

Following an article in the Summit County Labor News by Sherman H. Dalrymple, Goodrich local president, charging the Communists with being “disrupters,” etc., Claherty has appeared at the local meetings and threatened expulsion to every “red” discovered.

The attack and red scare obviously are to divert the attention of the rubber workers from the sell-out and swing the resentment of the workers from Claherty to the progressives when they begin attacking him openly.

 
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