Vietnam Protest and the Unions
Geltman, Emanuel
Among participants in the recent demonstrations for peace, especially the younger activists, dismay over the position of the unions on the Vietnam war has a way, at times, of spilling over...
...Nor is that the issue on which the discussion depends...
...It's kind of an impertinence in this context anyway...
...We share certain decencies, and therefore we can and must work together in the innumerable ways that push us forward...
...But how is it possible to work with the unions when, except for rare and weak exceptions, they do not share our concern about escalation of the war...
...If anything, the shoe ought to be on the other foot...
...I share their unhappiness at the way the trade unions have fallen into line behind Johnson's foreign policy...
...Congress has to put teeth into civil rights legislation, and it has before it a proposal to remove the iniquitous portions of the Taft-Hartley Act...
...Who says that all issues reduce themselves to the one issue of Vietnam...
...All that and more...
...So Meany or Reuther do not share our position on Vietnam,* or join our protest...
...This kind of thing has happened, as when the "no-strike" Communists opposed labor militancy after Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and Russia joined the Allies in the Second World War...
...This is not the place to discuss Meany's credentials as a union leader...
...In the here and now, the unions are our first line of strength in encouraging social advance if we work with and in them...
...And much, much more...
...So long as Meany upholds unionism as a basic right and first-line defense of workers everywhere, he upholds, by that evidence, democracy...
...For example, I think we have to be vigilant about internal democracy in the unions...
...There were indeed many influences favorably disposed to this development, but the uncommon militancy of the American worker was not the least of these...
...They have their position, and we challenge it and them, and proceed to whatever action we feel moved to undertake...
...1 do mean that the area of common interest with the unions is so wide, and so basic, that if we do not make common cause where common cause is indicated then we have abandoned any hope of succeeding in more than sporadic forays...
...Perhaps it is we who have to prove to the men and women who make up the unions that we are trustworthy allies...
...Mix the metaphor and use the unions as a litmus paper: a social system turns the color of tyranny or of democracy by how it reacts to free union organization...
...No working class in the world has accomplished as much in bettering the conditions of the people as has the American work ing class...
...I do not mean that we work with anybody at any time just because there is a coincidence of agreement...
...And obviously, any union member has an equal privilege and obligation to speak out for his views...
...The inescapable and central (if tautological) fact is that the unions, and the union leaders, are committed to—unionism...
...Among participants in the recent demonstrations for peace, especially the younger activists, dismay over the position of the unions on the Vietnam war has a way, at times, of spilling over into impatience, even hostility, toward the whole idea of unionism...
...It is embarrassing to state so simple a supposition, but Meany does have a right to his opinion, and a duty to air it, and there is no indication that he is betraying the consensus of the union membership, though he would still be privileged to voice his opinions on the war in Vietnam no matter what that consensus was...
...The problem is not really whether we can work with the unions...
...At their worst, and obviously excluding yellow-dog racketeers and other barnacles, the unions stand as a guarantee of democracy...
...I agree that there is a real and very difficult problem here for those of us who want to create a widely-based protest against the Vietnam war...
...But suppose we take Meany as representing the union leader...
...However much we try to engage the unions in broader social issues, their prime responsibility is to protect the interests of the working class, on a higher and higher level, to extend the protection of union organization to the unorganized, and through the discharge of these functions, to serve wider social ends...
...The greater problem is how far we can go in working with less savory elements—e.g., the Maoists—who despise the very liberties we hold dear...
...The question, however, is really better put, how not...
...It is our job to convince the rank and file union member, and the broad mass of people, not repudiate them...
...My views are, essentially expressed in the statement signed by several people which appears earlier in this section...
...And one view on what is to be done there too...
...Ford had to be brought to heel by union organization, and no auto worker needs a before-and-after picture of what unionism has meant in his life...
...It is a condition of democratic life that we had best adjust to if we expect our views, in all their variety, to get a wider hearing...
...As simple as that...
...In this elementary sense, then, I, a socialist, am delighted to be unreservedly on the side of Meany, who is not, or anyone like him, so long he defends the right of independent union organization and struggle against all those who, for whatever reason and with whatever rationalization, justify the cold-blooded suppression of free unions in any country—whether they be frankly antisocialist like Franco in Spain or parade under the banner of "socialism" as in China, Russia, Cuba, North Vietnam, or wherever...
...If Meany has even espoused unconditional negotiations, which is at least the formal Adminis tration position, it has escaped my attention...
...None has so elevated the dignity of the worker with a union card, nor in doing so better defended the basic democratic structure of our society...
...But I don't look for comrades in this concern among Birchites or other kinds of scoundrels who would destroy union independence and organization completely...
...A democratic society is a society in which unions can operate freely—is a society in which people debate openly —is a society in which people assemble at will...
...If we don't like Meany's views on Vietnam, we can criticize, denounce them, do whatever we think is proper in a proper way, without throwing our allies out of the window along with the dirty water of their position on Vietnam...
...Some union leaders are better, some worse...
...It is one of a number of simple equations that are available to us...
...If Meany, however, should say that we cannot admit Negroes to unions, that we cannot organize the unorganized, that we cannot press valid demands because of the war in Vietnam, he would indeed be violating his trust, and we would have to insist that he fulfill his obligations as a union leader...
...It seems strange to have to write a defense of unionism, of justifying collaboration with the union movement...
...If workers in other lands have frequently displayed greater social or political vision, no union movement has fought more splendidly than the American for economic (hence social) advances...
...In the meantime, we have urgent business at home, and it needs to be pursued in common even if, and as, we go our separate ways on Vietnam...
...Meany is not the labor movement...
...But, damn it all, they are ours, and if we turn our backs on them, we reduce ourselves to puling ineffectiveness...
...It is a fact that the AFL-CIO leadership, notably George Meany, has not only endorsed Administration policy, but has seemed to go beyond it in ferocity...
...he may well have the greater right to examine the credentials of people on "our" side...
...yet I want to argue against the tendency to disparage the unions...
...It was not all frontier and Henry Ford imagination...
...Use a sledgehammer if need be to get the Negro into the unions, but there is no purpose behind that if we do not see that the union is where the Negro needs to be to underwrite the dignity of his civil rights achievements...
...How then can we work with them...
...But that is another discussion...
...Nor can we say that other union leaders who are known to be more concerned with extending the social involvements of the unions have declared themselves differently...
...I do not mean by this that unions or union leaders are not open to the severest criticism, that they are not ever mean or internally corrupt, that they do not call for investigation pressure, improvement, or freshen ing...
...There are rats I prefer not to work with, and won't...
Vol. 13 • January 1966 • No. 1
