Upheaval in Labor's Ranks
Lens, Sidney
Upheaval in Labor's Ranks by SIDNEY LENS What emerged from the recent historic AFL-CIO convention was the inescapable conclusion that the path to progress is strewn with rusty nails. Labor's...
...At each important turning point in American capitalism American labor has had to change both its structure and its methods...
...This can be the opening of a new era, as significant in its own way as the birth of the AFL itself in 1886, or industrial unionism in 1935...
...Now Lovestone will change the form of his functioning, but Reutherites were free to admit it probably would make little real difference...
...There seemed to be an indecent haste in tossing out the Teamsters, Bakers, and Laundry Workers, particularly since the first Next...
...Yet labor remained mired in the programmatic cliches of its past without a single new idea for meeting the current emergencies...
...The industrial giants now cross national union boundaries...
...The end result was a needed centralization of power—needed today to guard against corruption, but useful tomorrow to organize the 30 million unorganized, to consolidate labor's bargaining power, and to make it a truly effective force in the community...
...Labor deserved and needed this, that, and the other because of the new "Communist strength," rather than because it deserved it per se...
...The tenor of the resolutions was like the man who read them, unimaginative...
...It was clear enough that many delegates clustered around Meany more out of fear of McClellan than adherence to the Meany policy...
...The relationships between Meany and Robert Kennedy, McClellan's chief counsel, were said to be more than cordial...
...There is some possibility that the Teamsters may be joined by a few other organizations, most notably the 750,000 member Carpenters Union...
...Labor's leaders, meeting to deal with the issue of corruption, undoubtedly took at least one step in the right direction...
...The really significant event of the eight-day meeting was not the expulsion of the most powerful affiliate of the movement, the 1.4 million teamsters, or even the severance of ties with the 150,000 bakers, but the derivative concepts that flowed from these actions: One—That the central AFL-CIO has the judicial right to intervene in the internal affairs of its affiliates to try them for "unethical practices...
...Reuther's industrial union department in the AFL-CIO is beginning to do this on a large scale...
...Labor finds itself increasingly in need of forming councils that also cross national union lines to weld together various organizations that can match the employers' economic power...
...three of its affiliates were expelled, including its most powerful, the Teamsters...
...soon the national unions—Teamsters, Carpenters, etc.—became the focal point of the movement...
...What will happen will probably redound to the benefit of AFL-CIO and the Teamsters both...
...Ed Miller of the Hotel and Restaurant Union was so mindful of this that he voted with the Teamsters even though he could have had a vice-presidency of the AFL-CIO if he had deserted them...
...It must be remembered that when the corrupt longshoremen were expelled from the AFL they turned into a legitimate union...
...Yet despite the bleak prospects, and despite the fact that it was the McClellan Committee that prodded AFL-CIO into action, the house of labor made a major move forward at this convention...
...Herman Winter, a former head of the Bakers and the former vice president of AFL-CIO, stated categorically that not only Cross, but AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Bill Schnitzler (another Bakers' Union alumnus) was guilty of the same sort of thing...
...After the turn of the Twentieth Century, with the introduction of mass-production techniques and more centralized state power, it became imperative for labor to shift emphasis from craft unions to industrial unions and to play a role in national politics far different from the old AFL type of politics...
...The expulsion of the Teamsters will not result in further corruption of that union, but in consolidation and improvement...
...George Harrison of the Railway Clerks got up to warn the delegates they were playing with fire in being soft on McClellan...
...Today America has entered a new phase of development, a phase of large scale government intervention into the economic process, automation, atomic energy, and the further development of political control...
...and above all protection against repressive national legislation...
...the philosophy of the movement was uplift and socialist...
...It may not be, if the Meany-Reuther leadership does not pounce on this opening to spread in the direction of true democracy and a rebirth of labor solidarity...
...The factory worker, organized in the '30s, had enough internal economic concentration and power to unionize with a minimum of outside help...
...Local city labor bodies tried to hang on to Teamster delegates until forced to break ties...
...Back home, at the grassroots, the break was even more painful...
...The Bakers' Union, as pointed out by its president, Jimmy Cross, is not a powerhouse...
...Both the method and the timing of purging corruption left much to be desired...
...But when labor's lawyers had taken the package apart two days later they found that the proposals put government four-square in the internal life of American labor...
...His articles have appeared in many publications, including The Yale Review, The Harvard Business Review, Harper's, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor...
...Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell reported on new labor legislation he intends to propose...
...And within AFL-CIO the center of gravity has now shifted in the direction of the more socially-conscious men around Walter Reuther...
...It was no secret in the comention corridors that many an old-line unionist cast his vote with AFL-CIO President George Meany through fear that McClellan might call him to the stand rather than because of deep inner convictions...
...ouster made many an old-line leader uneasy...
...but the methods used and the precedents set were downright confusing and sometimes disturbing...
...Hovering over the convention was the shadow of the McClellan Committee and the prospect of repressive legislation...
...But few of the delegates went away happy, and few liberals could easily find a useful needle in the confusion of the big haystack...
...The first reaction of the delegates was relief...
...Its departure from the past seems minute at first glance, but its portent for the future is momentous...
...New problems and needs include government supervision of atomic energy plants...
...Reuther and his friends are bitterly hostile to the synthetic anti-Communism of Lovestone and his theory that neutralists are only sly helpmates of the Communists...
...Up to now McClellan's main spotlight has been on the Teamsters, whose former leader, Dave Beck, had challenged the AFL-CIO merger more than anyone else...
...Observed from most points of the compass, the AFL-CIO convention carried labor nowhere...
...Still, labor's housecleaning and consolidation of power represent a hope for a better tomorrow for the labor movement, a movement more capable of meeting the challenge of an America in the age of automation, atomic energy, and further intervention by government in the economic process...
...The ouster of the Bakers was equally ambivalent...
...The constant spotlight that results from the competition of goliaths can serve to keep both on their toes, and improve their morality and militancy...
...And labor had to do this, that, and the other because of "world Communism," rather than because these were its own tasks...
...Two other factors drive labor toward centralization...
...two would have accepted an AFL-CIO monitor to police their affairs in the future...
...Moreover, they knew that Senator McClellan would soon be promoting his right-to-work law, and when Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks got through with Mitchell's proposals they would look far worse...
...The resolutions, read by David McDonald of the Steelworkers, were for the most part dull and uninspired...
...There has even been some talk lately of splitting away, but it is doubtful that the whole department or even a majority would do so...
...Toward the end of the convention there was a feeling that perhaps there had been too many concessions to McClellan and the government...
...In the foreign affairs field Meany made a minor concession to Reuther: he agreed that Jay Lovestone, the Communist leader of the 1920's and now the rabid anti-Communist of the 1950's, would have to liquidate his Free Trade Union Committee...
...Secondly, labor's decisions are more and more political decisions...
...Labor cleaned house...
...This is Meany's special trademark and it must have made liberals like Walter Reuther wince...
...But the implications of this SID LENS, one of the nation's most articulate labor leaders, is director of Local 329, AFL, of Chicago...
...For Jimmy Cross was not being tossed to the winds for association with gangsters—the charge against Hoffa...
...There is first of all the basic change in the composition of the labor force...
...Clearly a more centralized, and at the same time more flexible, labor movement is in order...
...That too is a step forward...
...But unorganized workers today need far more centralized help...
...technological unemployment compensation for workers displaced by automation...
...The AFL-CIO Building Trades Department, with about a quarter of the national membership, is restless in its age-old jurisdictional dispute with the industrial unions...
...It is doubtful that the AFL-CIO will be logical about this, but there were some uneasy men squirming in uneasy chairs, as the import of this decision was made clear...
...They still have one or two tainted spots, but their contracts are now honest labor union contracts and their national leadership represents a great improvement over the past...
...and, even more important, Two—That it has the executive right to monitor these affiliates if they were adjudged guilty...
...As to the schism resulting from the expulsions, that too in retrospect may be a blessing rather than a curse...
...Far more could have been done, in the prevailing atmosphere, to enroll the rank and file of labor for their own campaign against corruption...
...For all this a new type of movement is needed, and the second biennial convention of AFL-CIO, consciously or unconsciously, germinated the seed...
...But public opinion and McClellan had to be appeased and Meany refused to allow any signs of what might be criticized as dillydallying...
...The Teamsters may form some alliances with independents, such as Lewis and his miners, but so long as the present political danger prevails the Teamsters will hardly become the hub of a new federation...
...Industrial employment has increased by only three per cent in the last decade, while the number of unorganized white collar, service, and agricultural workers has skyrocketed by 25 per cent or more...
...His crime, if you want to put it bluntly, was "business unionism," a stigma that can be attached to far more union leaders than "association with gangsters...
...Cross' crime was that he had indulged himself in bakery union money and he was so chummy with a boss that he borrowed over $100,000 from him and then supposedly gave him a soft or sweetheart contract...
...But the means used left much to be desired, and it was obvious to all who wished to see that the motivating force for this change was not so much labor's hunger for cleanliness as fear of the McClellan Committee...
...But as American capitalism stabilized and grew after the civil war, labor evolved the simple bread-and-butter unionism of AFL...
...Meany opened the convention with the usual "anti-Communist" speech that pivoted labor's task around "fighting the world Communist conspiracy...
...it wasn't too bad...
...There were great misgivings about throwing out the Teamsters: too many unions depend on Teamster strength for their economic power...
...Cross, who grew up in the Illinois coal fields and was weaned on socialism, had taken a Cadillac or two, lived in a Palm Beach mansion, tossed around $40,000 in expense money, and had done other things of this sort...
...But it can be...
...General Motors, for instance, is involved in a score of industries...
...There were no new visions of how to meet the current recession, no new ideas on political action, no blazing call for a true offensive against war and the insanity that has gripped the nation since Sputnik...
...Prior to the civil war, when our industrial system was weak and unstable, the heart of American labor was the city central bodies which did the organizing and led the strikes...
Vol. 22 • February 1958 • No. 2
