Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1920 — NEWS OF ILLINOIS [ARTICLE]

NEWS OF ILLINOIS

A Telegraphic Chronicle of State Happenings. CON-CON HEARING FOR LABOR 111 ■ "■ Samuel Gompere, Fitzpatrick and Olander to Address Delegates at Springfield Next. Wednesday. Springfield, April 2—Union labor is to have a hearing before the constitutional convention next Wednesday. Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor-; John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, and Victor Olander, secretary of the Illinois State federation, will speak. The railroad brotherhoods also will be represented. The program of speakers was announced by William J. Sneed, chairman of the committee on industrial relations. Mr. Sneed, who Is a southern Illinois mine union district president and one of the labor leaders included in the conspiracy indictments returned by a federal grand jury at Indianapolis recently, Is the author of a proposal that the union heads will urge the convention to include In Its draft for a new constitution. It would preserve to labor the right to strike, the right of collective bargaining, would bar the use of the injunction where strikes are threatened and would have questions reaching the courts submitted to a jury rather than a judge. The Sneed proposal follows: “The labor of a human beinu is an attribute of a life and is not property. The right of workmen to organize into trade and labor unions and to deal and speak through representatives chosen by

themselves is declared and it shall hot be abridged. No court, tribunal, judge or any officer or official shall by any process, order. Injunction, restraining order, decree or proclamation abridge the right of any workman to quit any employment either singly or in concert nor the right of by peaceful persuasion, picketing, assemblage or the payment of strike benefits Inducing others to quit or to refrain from working; nor shall any such acts be made or held to be unlawful, or to constitute an unlawful conspiracy. Nor shall any such process, order, Injunction, restraining order, decree or proclamation Interfere with the exercise of the legitimate functions of any organization formed for the purpose of advancing the Interests of those who labor.” A report of the suffrage committee to the convention would limit elections to one each year to be held in November and which would be a holiday.