By Victor Riesel

Post Standard, ca. 1958

Depression, both of mood and finances, has hit labor's high command. It may well be that the house of labor will have to mortgage itself and borrow money. Reports are that the national AFL-CIO income has fallen below $150,00 a week--and is still dropping. If this continues, it could mean an insolvent national labor headquarters.

Hit by the depression like any other business, the AFL-CIO has slashed its staff by 40% and is cutting corners to stay out of the red. Like any other layoffs, the impact on the AFL-CIO employees has been brutal--especially on those who have been forced to retire on pensions of $10 to $20 a week and must depend on U.S. Social Security payments for more than their daily crumbs.

The slashings of labor's staff of organizers from its original total of 390--which cost $4 million a year to maintain--to less then 250 is not in George Meany's tradition.

There is little doubt that Meany moved under great pressure when he came to the AFL-CIO Executive Committee not too long ago with suggestions for slashing the national labor headquarters and 22 regional staffs even more drastically than was finally done.

He eased off and left the pruning to his second-in-command. William Schnitzler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. Brother Schnitzler was as subtle as an old burlesque pratfall. Of the 55 national labor organizers he fired about 40 were out of the old CIO, the last president of which was Walter Reuther.

Soon there will be 6 million jobless. Most of these are and will be union members in the heavy industries. Of the 1.11 million unlucky people who lost their jobs between mid-December and mid-January, almost .5 million were in the 'hard goods' industries, mostly metals, machinery and automobiles.

These cuts, just as much as the price of virtue, namely the ousting of the Teamsters and other unions, have hit the AFL-CIO budget. The Auto Union reportedly is paying for .25 million fewer members than it did a year ago. The Steelworkers Union is estimated to have almost .4 million fewer duespayers. Similarly hit are the Machinists and other craft outfits. For every unemployed worker, the national AFL-CIO headquarters loses a nickel a month.