78-06-B5

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Communications I

Transcript Recently a meeting took place that revealed how much Americans have been divided by labels and the images. Congressman Phil Crane of Illinois, a Republican and also chairman of the American Conservative Union, decided to try to establish communications with rank-and-file union workers. Obviously he can have contact every day with the hierarchy of organized labor in Washington. Indeed a labor lobbyist stands in the entrance to the House Chamber regularly giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down signal to Congressmen to indicate how they should vote on legislation when they respond to a roll call. That signal reflects the view of organized labors leadership in Washington. Phil Crane and a colleague, a young Congressman from Oklahoma, Mickey Edwards, journeyed to Youngstown, Ohio to meet with local labor leaders. 1fuy Youngstown? Because they wanted to hear the view of those local leaders on the closing of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube plant which wiped out the jobs of nearly 5,000 steel industry workers. The locals were edgy about meeting with Congressmen they thought of as "the opposition". They insisted on secrecy and no publicity, and they were suspicious that Crane and Edwards might be using them in some way. The meeting was held on their terms. Congressman Crane asked for their analysis of why the plant closed, and their views about economic problems in general. These men and women who work on the line, not at a desk in labor headquarters in Washington, told of injury to the investment climate caused by laws passed in Washington. One angrily asked if the Congressmen knew how much it cost to put in a new blast furnace. This, remember, was a worker--not a voice for management. They spoke of the inability of management to absorb mounting production costs imposed by government regulations. They were eloquent about the lack of a coherent energy policy designed to provide abundant fuel sources to keep industry going. And they told the two conservative Congressmen of how inflation was caused by uncontrollable deficit spending by the federal government. They criticized unfair trade practices by some foreign competitors and the harm done by environmental extremists who cared more for fish than people. You've heard me on these broadcasts express the same views. They are often described as "conservative". But, when Phil Crane asked the union workers if they thought of themselves as "liberal" or "conservative", they unanimously declared themselves liberal. Their definition of conservative was the typical stereotype, "spokesmen for big business and bankers, country club set , anti-working people, and so forth." Next broadcast I'd like to tell you about the follow up to that meeting. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-06-B5 Production Date 04/03/1978 Book/Page RihoH-300 Audio Youtube? No
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