Banner Graphic, Volume 13, Number 118, Greencastle, Putnam County, 25 January 1983 — Page 7
opinion
LARRY GIBBS Publisher
Letters to the Editor
Appeal to vandals: Don't take discontent out on property, cars
To the Editor We won’t go back! Must we, the "colored", or as some would say, “black people”, forever be looked upon as an object of racial hate? For generations, we have been subjected to name calling, dirty tricks, putdowns, letdowns, putouts and shutouts! In recent weeks the car of one of Greencastle’s black community leaders has been vandalized on several occasions. The car was scratched, the word “Nigger" w-ritten on it, hubcaps kicked in and a sticky substance put on it. As president of the Greencastle chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), I feel that it is time to speak out once again and that those who use vandalism and name calling to hurt and make life unpleasant for others should be stopped. The colored people may be few in number, but we refuse to go back to the past. We have helped to make this nation what it is today. We have worked and often not received equal pay for our work. We have paid more for almost everything because of different rates for blacks and whites. We are the last hired, first fired and-to add to this disgust-often times we are not even hired, the excuse given being no experience or no qualifications.
Signed letters are welcome
The Banner Graphic believes the interests of its readers are best served by expression of varied points of view. We offer our opinions and those of others on this page and welcome you to do the same, whether you agree, disagree or wish to comment on another subject of public interest. Letters to the editor should be typed or written clearly and limited to :SOO words if possible. All letters must be signed and include the author's address and telephone number. Although we en-
The T eamsters: Wage problems and a tarnished image, but all isn't bleak
Bv WILLIAM SERRIN c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON “Hoffa and the Teamsters,” Ralph C. James and Estelle D. James wrote of how contract negotiations were conducted under James R. Hoffa when he was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In one round of bargaining, the authors said, Hoffa announced that the union had gained triple pay for five holidays. James wrote, “I chided him, ‘Why not six?’ ” The next morning, James recalled, Hoffa told his associates, “Ralph thinks I should have made it six holidays and thinks I can’t change.” He immediately went to the employers, who thought the bargaining had ended, and in 20 minutes increased the number of triple-time holidays to six. That was how the union existed under Hoffa, the authors wrote. But that kind of power has been lost. A year ago, Roy L. Williams, the union’s president and long a close Hoffa associate, agreed to substantial concessions in the master contract with the country’s major truckers. It was the first time the contract had been reopened since it was first negotiated by Hoffa in 1964. Now Trucking Management Inc., the bargaining arm of the major freight companies, has asked the union to discuss more adjustments to the 37-month agreement Williams and Arthur H. Bunte Jr., the industry’s chief negotiator, reached last year. An answer is expected from Williams and other union leaders this week when the general executive board meets in Tampa Bay, Fla. The concessions were needed because the trucking industry faces extreme financial difficulties, with dramatic reductions in freight being hauled. In addition, deregulation, approved in July 1980, has resulted in the emergence of hundreds of new, nonunion companies that often offer far lower rates. As a result, many unionized companies are cutting rates and refusing to pay wages called for by the master freight agreement. The contract, which covered about 300,000 workers when it was negotiated, sets wages for union members at about sl3 an hour The agreement essentially provided a wage freeze or modest gains at
ERiC BERNSEE Managing Editor
As president of the NAACP, I plead with the vandals to please not take your discontent out on "black people”, their property and cars. They worked so very hard for them and they have feelings just as you do. We also want some of the good things out of life and we further have the desire for our children to get a good education free from all injustices. School days and memories should be the best days of their lives. For our black youth, this has not been true. With all the problems in the world today, I am sure you would agree if there ever were a time when we' need each other, that time is now--regardless of race, religion or creed. The powers of the government have put the blacks and whites into one big ballgame, a game that we must play together. The winners must be us--the blacks and whites, not only here in Putnam County but all over the United States of America, all working together for a common cause, justice and peace for all. Speaking as a leader in the black community, I reiterate: We will not go back. We will continue to work for changes in the present and future for blacks, whites and all minorities. Rev. Thomas Wood President, Greencastle Branch NAACP
courage readers to permit publication of their names, requests for use of initials will be honored in most cases. Letters containing personal attacks on individuals, libelous statements or profanity will not be published. All letters are subject to editing, although such w ill be held to a minimum and the intent of a letter will not be altered. Send your letters to: Letters to the Editor, The Banner Graphic, I*. O. Box 509, Greencastle, Indiana 461X5.
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best for truckers. Today many companies have not become parties to the agreement, and many truckers complain that their wages are being badly depressed. When the agreement was negotiated, the union and industry executives heralded it as one that would bring unemployed truckers back to work. This has not occurred. But this is not the only difficulty the union faces. Independent truckers, angered by increased taxes contained in a law signed by President Reagan this month to provide added revenues for the nation’s highway system, are threatening to strike Jan. 31. The independents do not belong to the union and, in many cases, disparage it, contending that it cannot enforce its contracts. They also assert that unionization impinges on the independence that many truckers cherish, although teamster wages have long set a basis for wages throughout the industry. If this were not enough, Williams, like two predecessors, Hoffa and Dave Beck, faces legal difficulties. He was convicted in December on Federal bribery conspiracy charges and is to be sentenced Feb. 10. Last week, a longtime adviser on union pension investment decisions, Allen M. Dorfman, was killed outside Chicago, ad-
Subversive war against capital punishment
By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. Universal Press Syndicate There are several developments on the capital punishment front of interest, primarily a recent statement by Pope John Paul II that is being interpreted by the abolitionists as a major ethical event What the pope called for was "clemency and mercy for those condemned to death” -- but listen: “especially (for) those who have been condemned for political motives.” The word “especially” seemed to give it away. That is to say, the pope (a) believes in clemency and exhortations as old as Christianity, but (b) tacitly acknowledges that clemency is more appropriate in some cases than in others -- particularly it is appropriate for convicted men whose crimes were political. THE POPE here postulates something the abolitionists are entirely unwilling to do: which is that there is a distinction between superior and lesser claims for clemency. In a perfect world, everyone would forgive everyone. On the other hand, in a perfect world there would be nothing to forgive anyone for. Now the granting of clemency is, in the United States, an executive prerogative. For so long as the legislature specifies capital punishment as the appropriate response to crimes of a certain character, the courts are obliged to mete out that punishment. Exhortations for clemency
Absence of policy leaves high schools in disarray
By FRED M. HECHINGER c. 1983 N.Y. Times NEW YORK American high schools are in disarray because the necessary policy decisions are being left unmade by so many by local authorities, by state governments, the universities and the federal government. This charge is brought by Dr. Michael W. Kirst, professor of education at Stanford University and former president of the California State Board of Education, in a policy paper for the Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance at Stanford. The paper was prepared for the 1983 yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, to be published in the spring. In the absence of effective policymaking by others, teachers are forced to make their own, and many are ill prepared to do so. Students are given choices which, in the absence of sound adult guidance, leave all but the most capable among them floundering without a meaningful educational road map Crucial issues about what should be learned, Kirst charges, “are resolved through capitulating to recurrent cycles. This year’s emphasis on back-to-basics gives
ding to the union’s tarnished image. Dorfman was among the men convicted with Williams last month. For all its troubles, everything is not bleak for the union, which was chartered in 1899 by the American Federation of Labor to organize drivers of vehicles pulled by teams of horses. Known officially as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, the union is still the largest labor organization in the country. But its membership has declined from well over 2 million to 1.7 million. In the last two years, the union has talked of organizing industrial and public workers, but these drives have not achieved significant success. Some in the labor movement argue that the attention given to corruption and violence in the union hides the fact that the union has many decent members, is attractive to many workers and conducts many praiseworthy activities. Stanley Aronowitz, a New York-based labor analyst, says the union has a historic attitude that the government is out to get unions. With the teamsters, Aronowitz and other observers say, this sometimes may be the case. Chuck Mack, president of the union’s
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are directed to the president in federal cases, and to governors in state cases. The abolition of capital punishment is exclusively the concern of the legislatures, and in America the trend is toward the universalization of capital punishment. More states as of this writing approve of capital punishment than of the Equal Rights Amendment, and it is expected that Oregon will soon become the 39th state of the Union to reverse the abolition it voted for 20 years ago. NOW THIS BRINGS UP, for the second time in this space, the grave problem accosted by Professor Raoul Berger of Harvard. Professor Berger is most readily distinguishable as the legal scholar who became a household word among the liberal intelligentsia when he published a book during the Watergate season asserting that no legal obstacles lay in the way of a Congress that conscientiously sought
way to next year’s concern that electives need to be reinstated to prevent dropouts.” The policy-making process, he adds, “is pervaded with politics and pressures” often unrelated to the students’ educational needs. He sees the universities as a major culprit in the debasement of the high school curriculum because higher education “has lost all sense of coherence, integration, sequencing and priority.” Kirst finds college students wandering "through a disconnected maze,” and since the college curriculum has no common core, the high schools are left in the dark about what is important. Citing the example of California’s state universities, he says "An A in photography or typing counts the same as an A in English or physics” in determining w ho is to be admitted. Moreover. Kirst continues, “As the universities provided more remedial work in basic skills, the need to learn academic skills in high school became less urgent.” In the academic year 1979-80, he says by way of illustration, the University of California spent $5.3 million on teaching high school-level basic skills, with a fulltime staff of 280 remedial instructors. Universities, Kirst says, could have a
Joint Council Seven in San Francisco, says that given “the time and money” the government spends scrutinizing the union, ‘’it can find something on anybody.” “You have to believe there is some decision, somewhere, that the government will target the teamsters, that we are all bad guys,” he added. Robert F. Bonitati, White House special assistant for labor affairs, said the Reagan administration had a “continuing dialogue” with the union and suggested that Williams’s conviction had not altered the relationship. The union was one of three major labor organizations that supported Reagan in 1980. Asked if he or other administration officers were troubled by dealing with a union with the teamsters’ reputation, Bonitati said that with unions, “You work with who the workers elect.” Ken Pass, a leader of the dissident Teamsters for Democratic Union, is a severe critic of what he calls the union's nepotism, high salaries for leaders and lack of aggressive organizing and democratic practices. Yet he says corruption does not characterize the entire union. He contends that corruption is extensive in New Jersey, for example, but essentially nonexistant in California and some other Western states.
to impeach a president for misconduct. Professor Berger a few years later published a book challenging the availability of the 14th Amendment to liberals who wanted to use it to carry out their social agenda, whatever it was at any given moment. Berger became an antihero. But at age 81 he is back with another book, “Death Penalties: The Supreme Court’s Obstacle Course,” in which he devastates those who argue against the death penalty on the grounds that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. And goes on to deplore subversion of popular government by those who. in their zeal to avoid the death penalty, end up as zealous destroyers of democratic government. When in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the capital punishment laws as inconsistent and “freakishly imposed,” the court arrogated authority it simply did not have. Justice Potter Stewart wrote that death sentences “are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. ” Yl’P. AND IF THE Supreme Court outlaws lightning. I’m all for it. But to outlaw the positive law of men and women vested by the people with authority to prescribe punishment on the grounds that these laws are variously enforced is no argument at all, or else it is an argument against democratic practice.
William Buckley
powerful impact on the high school curriculum if they themselves had a sense of their own students' direction. But, he observes, few university presidents, trustees or faculty senates are willing to reexamine the education that ought to govern the common cause of their own undergraduates. Despite all the public statements about the importance of local control of the schools, Kirst finds that local school boards rarely think about overall curriculum policies. Instead, these boards “react to lobby groups,” and the lobbyists generally want to add subjects close to their hearts, thus cluttering up the curriculum rather than giving it direction and cohesion. Schools in that way have been pushed into offering courses on drug abuse, moral education, energy, career education, ethnic studies, parenting, environment and so forth. “Indeed, the weakest lobbies," Kirst says, “are in such established subject areas as English and math.” He offers as a fairly typical example a high school in suburban Chicago that provides 252 courses. At the same time. Kirst found, the states rarely contribute much to the prescription of a common curriculum, except for set-
“You have got good locals and bad locals,” he said, but he added. “The dead wood of the bureaucracy keeps good locals from doing much.” Still, corruption and violence often occur among union leaders or their associates, as demonstrated by the killing of Dorfman. Just as important, union critics say, the teamsters often do not engage in basic practices expected of a major union. The union has no organizing director. Critics say its safety department provides minimal service at best to drivers, although Arthur Fox, a Washington lawyer and union critic, says that 1.000 heavytruck drivers are killed on the road each year. Even industry executives who regularly deal with the teamsters dislike discussing the union, apparently for fear of raising the anger of union leaders. Bunte refused to be interviewed, as did Edward V. Kiley, senior vice president of the American Trucking Associations, the major industry trade association. Despite its image and some leaders’ legal difficulties, the union has enjoyed the reputation of tough bargaining and of enforcing union contracts. Labor authorities say this is a major reason many groups, including police officers and hospital and
January 25,1983, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic
A. process of elimination
Consider. It has been many years since capital punishment was restored pursuant to the Supreme Court’s criteria. But has it made a significant difference? No. Only six convicted men have been executed. The ACLU’s position that capital punishment is unfair because good lawyers can get you out is an inadvertent confession. Time magazine, in a well-executed cover story on capital punishment now on the stands, quotes the director of Florida’s Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice, one Scharlette Holdmari, who says: “If you’re adequately represented you don’t get death. It’s that simple.” If it’s that simple, then what we are being told is that legal practice has developed techniques that are simply flouting the law. One wonders what would be the reaction if one were to hear, "If you are adequately represented, you don't get a prison sentence for bribery.” THE POINT, OF COURSE, is that those who seek the abolition of the death penalty seek it quite apart from constitutionally specified measures for abolition. They call this sort of thing -- when w'hat they mean is that they oppose it -- “taking the law into one’s own hand.” Richard Nixon got thrown out of the White House for doing that. What the abolitionists can’t accomplish - - which is the abolition of capital punishment by due process - they are seeking to do by other means, and many who think themselves law-abiding are going along with the act.
ting down some minimal requirements for graduation. A review of some state requirements turns up examples that range from platitudinous to absurd. In Maine, for example, the schools are required to teach virtue and morality for not less than half an hour a week, including "principles of morality and justice and a sacred regard for truth, love of country, humanity, a universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and all other virtues that ornament human society.” Kirst sees hard battles ahead. Many students and parents, wary of an unfavorable job market, push for specialization at the same time as school leaders increasingly believe that a common curriculum is needed to clean up the educational chaos. All that is clear at the moment is that the schools will continue to be buffeted by conflicting forces and special-interest lobbies unless policy makers on the state and local level and at the universities join forces in charting a course that puts educational goals ahead of short-term fads, fears and politics.
public workers, have been attracted to the teamsters. That reputation is undermined by Bunte’s request for adjustments to the present contract. If the union does not agree to discussions, the industry can blame the union if business continues to erode and more trucking jobs are lost. If discussions held and more concessions are almost certainly made, critics can say Williams is selling the union out. Bonitati said the union had a far less adversarial position toward management than most unions. This does not please union dissidents and many union truckers. Like dissidents in other unions. Pass says concessions will not save jobs. The answer to the union’s problems, he says, lies in organizing and other aggressive action. He sees the unsettling situation facing the independent drivers as a “golden opportunity" for the union to begin a wellfinanced organizing drive among independents. If adjustments are made to the contract. Pass says, insurgents will insist that a new document be submitted to members for ratification. He says “enormous discontent" about concessions exists and adds, “I think it would be very hard" to win approval.
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