Vol. 72/No. 1      January 7, 2008

The attack consists of a campaign of spying, harassment, and intimidation aimed at Sally Goodman, an electrician at the Martin Marietta Corp. plant here, and other members of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 766. Goodman is one of only three women electricians in the plant and is a founding member of the Denver chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. She is also a supporter of the Young Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party.

The harassment of Goodman takes form of an “investigation” by the Defense Investigative Service (DIS), the spy agency of the Department of Defense. This harassment is taking place with the connivance and encouragement of Martin Marietta, a major weapons producer with billion-dollar contracts for making the MX missile and other military hardware.  
 
December 30, 1957
While “goofnik” didn’t rise more than four feet off its pad down at Cape Canaveral, Florida, two things did rise throughout the country—namely, unemployment and the cost of living.

New reports coming in this week tell of increased layoffs by leading American industries. Chrysler and Ford head the parade with announcements that they are closing down their Detroit assembly lines for a “temporary layoff” of two weeks. This lets out 90,000 workers there. Three steel plants in the Baltimore area are adding 1,400 more workers to those already laid off, and some towns in the New England textile centers report more unemployed than employed. These are layoffs publicized in the national press; others are only known in the localities where they occur.

The business economists are revising their estimate of unemployment for 1958 from the “optimistic” figure of 3 1/2 million they projected in October to a figure of five million or more.  
 
December 31, 1932
The shots fired by a member of the Waiters’ Union, Local 1 of New York, which sent to the hospital two of its business agents, brings sensationally to the forefront one of the these running sores which has made the American labor movement unique in the entire world. The publicity attendant upon the shooting brought to public view the following facts:

It has been the custom in this union for the business agents to charge workers anywhere from $100 up to be “placed” on a job, in agreement with the petty bosses who received from the labor racketeers a portion of the tax imposed illicitly upon the worker desperate for a job. A short time after the worker had parted with his money, and obtained the job, he found himself discharged by the boss, in cahoots with the labor officials, who promptly proceeded to start the game all over again with some other worker. While the jobs were “rotated” in this ingenious manner, the workers were being separated from vast sums of money.  
 
 
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