Collegians and Labor Leaders Inaugurate Political Coalition

A group of about 30 student and faculty leaders-mostly from the Boston area-met with some of the nation's top labor leaders in the Faculty Club yesterday, batted around ideas for seven hours and came up with a loosely-formed coalition of academicians and labor leaders.

The coalition will, according to George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, operate on a basis of "What's good for the universities and the labor unions is what's good for the country."

But after declaring itself a formal organization, the group became embroiled in a series of arguments that prevented it from taking its first official action.

The meeting, chaired by Wald, voted to establish approximately ten "locals"-autonomous coalitions of labor and academic leaders in each of the major industrial centers in the country. The meeting also elected a committee of nine to act as a "clearing house" to facilitate communications between each of the local chapters. The committee will have no policy-making power.

Each chapter will try to decide how to deal with inflation, unemployment, the Indochina war, racism, misuse of the judicial process, and other issues on a local level. James Matles, Secretary-Treasurer of the United Electrical Workers, said such action would "serve notice on those who are doing so much damage to our country that they can no longer count on the division between workers and students."

After the meeting unanimously approved the creation of the coalition, Joseph Rhodes, Junior Fellow at Harvard and a member of the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest, suggested that the group hold a press conference before the congressional elections to declare its opposition to the administration.

Howard Zinn, professor of Government at Boston University, said he was "troubled by the emphasis on press conferences and big names and all of that crap."

Anthony Mazzocchi, Legislative Director of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, objected to Rhodes' motion on the grounds that "workers have been pontificated to enough." The motion was eventually tabled.