Vol. 81/No. 35      September 25, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 
September 25, 1992
LOS ANGELES — More than 600 people came to hear Cuban youth leader Ibis Alvisa González, a researcher at the Center for Youth Studies of Havana, during her tour of Southern California August 24-31. She spoke at eight meetings, four on college campuses.

At the University of California in Los Angeles, Alvisa pointed to the importance of the direct participation of the Cuban people, youth in particular, in solving Cuba’s economic problems. She reported that 100,000 university students used their summer vacations to work as volunteers in agriculture.

One questioner asked if Cuba would be forced to abandon its aid to other countries, given the economic hardships. “If we abandon the internationalism of the revolution, we would abandon the revolution,” Alvisa replied.

September 25, 1967
The Pentagon has widened the air war in North Vietnam by deliberately bombing closer than ever to China, and bombing the port facilities at Hanoi and Haiphong for the first time.

The raids came only two weeks after Defense Secretary McNamara had told the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee that bombing of the port area was too risky because Soviet, Chinese and other communist bloc vessels might be hit. Attacks on such targets, he testified, run “the risk of direct confrontation with Communist China or the Soviet Union: and these dangers outweigh the military desirability of striking them.”

The overriding of McNamara’s arguments indicates that the President is now bent on maximizing the air war. Behind and beyond this decision to press ahead regardless of consequences looms the specter of the nuclear mushroom cloud.

September 26, 1942
The War Labor Board on September 17 rejected the demand of the CIO United Auto Workers for a dollar-a-day wage increase in General Motors, and granted an increase of only 4 cents an hour, less than one-third of the union’s original demand.

In a decision affecting over 225,000 GM workers, the WLB flatly rejected the recommendations of the panel on the case.

The GM panel had proposed that in line with the WLB’s “Little Steel” formula a raise of 1.5 cents an hour be given to cover the difference between the 15% rise in living costs since January 1941, and increases won by GM workers since that time.

The Chrysler and Ford workers’ demands for dollar-a-day wage increases are still pending. It can be seen from the GM decision that these workers will be turned down by the WLB, and will be given very small increases, if any.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home