Double Standard

In their beaverboard office in the basement of a Government building in La Boca, five dark-skinned men sat back and mopped their brows with satisfaction. They were the officers of Local 713, United Public Workers of America (C.I.O.), and they had just signed up their 15,897th dues payer. This meant that most of the men now working on the Panama Canal belong to a union dominated by Communists.

Less than a year ago the only unions in the Zone worth mentioning were the A.F.L. affiliates, to which most of the 5,000 U.S.-born workers belonged. Then' the U.P.W.A. saw its chance, and sent organizers among the Canal Zone's 25,000 Panamanian and West Indian employees, most of whom lived in crowded slums across the fence in Panama. They found a Communist's dream. Ready for their exploiting was one of the worst examples of racial discrimination extant anywhere, and it was sanctioned by the U.S. Government.

When the U.S. went south in 1904 to dig the big ditch it took Jim Crowism into the tropics. Skilled U.S. foremen were paid in gold currency; locally recruited labor, mainly Jamaican Negroes, were paid in silver. Those on the gold roll shopped at "gold" commissaries; those on the silver roll went to others marked "silver." Drinking fountains labeled gold and silver stood side by side. At the post-office were two separate wickets. The system went farther: the few Negroes on the gold roll would never have dreamed of sending their children to the superior gold schools, though theoretically they had that right. Worst of all, it was practically impossible to move from the low-paid silver list to the privileged gold roll. After 43 years there are exactly 54 Panamanians on the gold roll.

"Throw Them Out." With such a ready-made situation, Local 713's membership snowballed. Army officials, alarmed by U.P.W.A.'s growth and embarrassed by the old Jim Crow system, were ready to meet the union's demands, at least half way. By last week the union claimed these gains: 1) removal of the hateful gold and silver signs in public places; 2) an order admitting Panamanians to equal terms in civil service exams; 3) hourly wage hikes of 2-c- to 6-c-; 4) a 40-hour week; 5) improved vacation privileges; 6) more overtime pay.

Quite obviously, this strengthened U.P.W.A. in the Canal Zone. It also raised the question of the influence that U.P.W.A.'s President Abram Flaxer and other Communist-wired leaders exert in the Zone. Not all Local 713's members would fall for it. The Local's secretary-treasurer, Edward Gasking, a Negro schoolteacher, said that if the union's U.S. leaders urged action hostile to Canal Zone interests, "we'd throw them bodily out."

But last week Max Brodsky, a trusted Flaxer staffman, arrived in Panama to help run U.P.W.A.'s membership drive. And there were reports that Communists were buying Panamanian citizenship so as to qualify for civil service jobs on locks and docks. In Washington, a Senate subcommittee headed by Minnesota's Ed Thye got ready to investigate the whole situation.

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