University of Virginia Library

Woodcock Blames War
For Rising Inflation

By Mark Schapiro
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Declaring that the war had made a
shambles of the United States economy
Leonard Woodcock, president of the
United Auto Workers, called Thursday
night for the United States to withdraw
from Vietnam.

Although Mr. Woodcock was
scheduled to speak on "New Strategies in
American Labor Bargaining," he began
with a critical attack on the war in
Vietnam, establishing a tone which was to
pervade the evening.

Mr. Woodcock, whose speech was
sponsored by the Student Legal Forum,
stated that the effects of utilizing
anything short of nuclear weapons on the three
helpless countries in Indochina had had a
traumatic effect on the American people.

The successor to the legendary Walter
Reuther, Mr. Woodcock said he held a
vulnerable position in the auto workers'
organization, but that he still took a firm stand
in his organizational meetings on the United
States' need to withdraw from Vietnam.

To back his statements on the war, Mr.
Woodcock cited unemployment figures
beginning with the Kennedy Administration
when the unemployment was at seven percent.
He stated that this figure dropped to four and
one-half percent in 1965 when prices reached
stability. However, he said, the escalation of the
war caused prices to rise.

Turning to his union, he said that the United
Auto Workers was probably the most liberal of
the major unions. According to Mr. Woodcock,
the Blue Collar worker is a victim of snobbery
in the Democratic party and is unfairly blamed
for the inflation in the United States.

He continued to say that this worker who
has been alienated could at this point go to
either the left or the right politically. He
warned that if the worker were to go to the
right, this would lay the bases for a fascist
government.

Mr. Woodcock suggested that a coalition of
the black, brown, intelligentsia, white collar,
and blue collar be formed. Stating that 73 per
cent of Americans, including the major part of
the UAW, want an end to the war, Mr.
Woodcock said that "whatever direction they
came from, they have come together."

He pointed out that to call the war Nixon's
war was a "cop out," since Congress controls
the purse strings and can end the war. Mr.
Woodcock said he believes it's up the
Democrats in 1972 and that any Democrat will
win, although he personally would not back
Henry Jackson, Senator from Washington.

Mr. Woodcock continued by stating that it
was our duty to stop the killing in Vietnam. He
added that Nixon's Vietnamization plan will
not end the deaths but only "substitute yellow
bodies for white bodies." He expressed hope
for apolitical solution in Paris and stated that
the next months could provide the last chance
for a solution.

Mr. Woodcock also proposed an
internationally supervised ceasefire to establish
a peaceful atmosphere for the upcoming
elections during August and October in
Vietnam, and he suggested that the other side
be allowed to participate in the elections.

The Nixon administration, he said, made
such an offer last October but later withdrew it,
using the excuse that "the other side rejected
the proposal." "Negotiations, not
Vietnamization," he added, "is the way to
unlock the cells of the prisoners in North
Vietnam."

Mr. Nixon, he said, planned to help the
economy by temporarily raising the level of
unemployment in order to decrease inflation,
but he charged that only the first objective had
been accomplished, and not the second.