"Foreign imports do not have the impact the American steel industry says they do," the insurgent candidate for union president maintained.

"You can't attribute a Japanese worker for taking an American worker's job. That is the boss's game. He'd like you to think that."

With thousands of steelworkers being laid off across the country, this emotion-charged issue points up the fundamental difference between Sadlowski's approach and that of the present United Steelworkers of America leadership.

Current President I.W. Abel and his handpicked successor Lloyd McBride are flag-waving partisans of the anti-import drive, absolving the steel profiteers of all responsibility for layoffs.

Abel and McBride call for import quotas and tariffs to protect "our" industry, and for joint labor management efforts to increase productivity so "our" corporations will be more competitive.

Sadlowski put the blame for unemployment squarely on the bosses. And he rejects union cooperation with productivity drives that eliminate jobs and endanger workers' lives through speedup.

"For every American worker whose job has been lost by foreign importation," Sadlowski told the Cleveland rally, "five American workers' jobs have been lost because of BOF [Basic Oxygen Furnace] shops."  
 
December 17, 1951
The Pennsylvania Senate has passed a bill requiring that every public worker, officeholder, or political candidate sign a "loyalty" oath, and the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania is preparing to act on it. This action closely follows the enactment of a witch-hunt measure by the state legislature outlawing the Communist Party.

Pennsylvania is one of the strongholds of CIO unionism. Specifically, it is the area where Phillip Murray's own union, the United Steelworkers of America, has its greatest strength and largest districts.

The CIO, at its recent convention in New York, voted a strong resolution condemning just such laws as the one now under consideration in the Pennsylvania legislature. The CIO convention came out strongly against the Smith Gag Act, and asked for revision of all existing laws which infringe on civil liberties by curbing rights of free opinion and speech.

The Pennsylvania gag act hits directly at the civil rights of all Pennsylvania workers, not merely at the Communist Party. The law specifically destroys fair judicial procedures, putting the burden of proof upon the accused person, and shielding the accuser from the need to prove his case, or even from the need to confront the person he is accusing. The innocent must prove his innocence in a biased court, and he must prove it without even knowing the specific charges against him.

The Pennsylvania coal and steel bosses have used such legislation against the labor movement in the past, and they will do it again.  
 
 
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