Labor's Love Lost
Cort, John C.
BOOKS LABOR'S LOVE LOST JOHN C. CORT American Labor: A P i c t o r i a l Social H i s t o r y M. B. SCHNAPPER Public Affairs Press, $15 Blacks in the I n d u s t r i a l World THEODORE V....
...It's worth a look and Mr...
...They were not UE strikes but they taught us all what UE was capable of...
...Their focuswithin-a-focus is the electrical manufacturing industry (GE, Westinghouse, etc...
...The trouble was that the pictures and cartoons were so fascinating that I found myself spending almost as much time studying a page of them as I would reading a page of text...
...Where were you...
...Nevertheless, any man (Matles) who can spend Christmas week far from home visiting picket lines is somebody you would like to see in the mainstream of the labor movement...
...Pretty hard to answer the white worker who says, "Why punish me for something some other white guy did or didn't do years ago...
...But I just pray...
...Edelman's book both gains and suffers by contrast with Them and Us, an interesting saga about the UE, the most successful of the old Stalinist unions and one of the few that survived their exit from the CIO in 1949...
...The subtitle, "Issues for Managers" is valid because this is basic training for every plant executive, in or out of the electrical industry, who is concerned with giving black people a decent break...
...His political orientation was vaguely Socialist or Social Democratic...
...ROBERT PHILLIPS' most recent book is Moonstruck: An Anthology o/ Lunar Poetry (Vanguard...
...Where were the UE resolutions then, Messrs...
...It doesn't quite come off, and the best way I can indicate this is to mention the fact that he manages to finish his story without mentioning Vietnam once...
...And I would look over to the side, to the space next to me...
...I'd rather stick with the "equalizing" bit...
...It has already been out for a while now, but if you haven't seen it, beg, borrow, or buy a copy...
...Outside of Harry Bridges, another survivor, Matles is one of the more able and respected Stalinist leaders...
...Just as white workers, including their union leaders, cooperate with integration on the ground that they have no choice--the company demands it, so companies like to justify black recruitment and promotion on the ground that the government requires it...
...I said: 'Help me, Jesus, I got to work somewhere . . . . ' Eventually, she got help, The foreman stepped in and told the worst bigots to lay off...
...Purcell and Cavanagh have some interesting things to say on the growing problem of reverse discrimination...
...A beautiful job...
...Labor Lobbyist is the autobiography of the late John W. Edelman (edited by Joseph Carter...
...The authors are James Higgins, a competent journalist, and James Matles, general secretary of the UE, short for United E!ectrical Radio and Machine Workers...
...The authors emphasize the fact that theirs is "a listening book...
...Unlike Edelman they write with passion and bite and, like Vietnam, it would not be smart to ignore them...
...Yeah, great...
...Over all, a most valuable book...
...The good fathers really know how to play that tape recorder...
...from the CIO...
...It's a great book...
...And some of us are old enough to remember how you and your Progressive Party almost elected Dewey in 1948not that Dewey is in quite the same category as Hitler...
...Well, almost every...
...The tapes make excellent reading and they are clearly more faithful to the originals than other tape transcripts you may have read lately...
...The most moving interview was with a young woman who was the first black person hired in the Memphis plant, which operated from its founding in 1947 to 1961 with a lily-white work force...
...Too many good men in the labor movement ignored Vietnam for much too long, to the great benefit of George Meany and Richard Nixon...
...and they taped interviews with hundreds of black and white workers, foremen, and managers at four separate plants in Chicago, Buffalo, Memphis and Lynchburg, Virginia...
...In that mostly delightful, sometimes maddening, piece he did for Atlantic Monthly last July, Sheed laments, like most of us, over the hardening arteries and softening muscles and brains of America's current crop of labor leaders...
...Like in Finland, 1939, or Hungary, 1956, or Czechoslovakia, 1968...
...Schnapper has made that look easy and enjoyable...
...Lively, funny, tragic, violent, and great...
...I thought it would be a nice way to warm up for a review of the other books...
...Christmas may not mean the same to us, but I find it hard to withhold admiration...
...I had forgotten myself how lively it was...
...Cursing...
...Still, they opt for some measure of preference and this seems to me to be racial discrimination in reverse and that's a tough thing to defend...
...But there were so many pictures and cartoons that I figured this should be a cinch even for an obsessive type who can never bring himself to skip a word of a review book--well, hardly ever...
...No, 1949 was not 1974, when Russia seems to have acquired a mellow tolerance that is often missing in your book...
...They make a distinction between preferential treatment for blacks and what they call "equalizing practice," which means "spending extra time and money Commonweal: 113 simply to make opportunities equal in recruiting, hiring, training and helping to promote Negroes...
...For example, with a fine self-righteous flourish they point out how the UE had always been anti-Vietnam and "against war and militarism in foreign policy...
...I mean rilly...
...I asked God to help me...
...Reminds one" mainly, because this scholarly study by Fathers Purcell and Cavanagh, two smart Jesuits, does not go into the union thing very much except to make the point that unions reflect the prejudices of their members and it is easier for the company to promote integration at the work place because everybody understands that companies can act arbitrarily and don't have to take a vote, Interesting point...
...I never worked with anybody like this before...
...They quote a UE convention resolution of 1964: "Efforts to apply military solutions to problems of international relationships are irrational in origin and ruinous in prospect...
...If now you and the UE are as opposed to Russian militarism as you are to American militarism, let's hear it...
...And they won't be bored...
...You may quote Monsignor Rice to the effect that the UE was the victim of a bum rap, but here is one old activist who is by no means ready to go to confession to "Fitzie...
...I could see it was monumental: 568 pages of pictures, cartoons, news clips, and text...
...The most memorabIe of these is M. B. Schnapper's pictorial history, American Labor...
...A whole plant of people in here were---I don't know how to describe it...
...Unlike Edelman, Matles and Higgins are about as humorless as you would expect...
...That is why fair employment, and promotion laws are so important...
...And by 1970, 27 percent of the work force was black and working relations between the races were, the authors conclude, "tranquil, even good...
...It took a whole lot out of me, you know...
...Blacks in the Industrial World focuses on a problem which reminds one of some of labor's more inglorious moments: those moments when black workers were getting the shaft from unions that didn't want to move over and let somebody else work beside Whitey...
...See how even Nixon has made his peace with Russia and China...
...Devil action...
...JORDAN BISHOP teaches at the College of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia...
...Fitzie is Albert Fitzgerald, whom the Stalinists put up to knock off Jim Carey in 1941, after Carey broke with them during the period of the Nazi-Soviet pact...
...I'd kinda smile...
...Edelman was a very civilized, urbane, decent man who spent most of his long and useful career working for the Textile Workers in various capacities: organizer, editor, Washington lobbyist...
...But union types, poverty types, black leader types can benefit too...
...And labor's present is mostly so dull that we can use this kind of lively recall...
...BOOKS LABOR'S LOVE LOST JOHN C. CORT American Labor: A P i c t o r i a l Social H i s t o r y M. B. SCHNAPPER Public Affairs Press, $15 Blacks in the I n d u s t r i a l World THEODORE V. PURCELL & GERALD F. CAVANAGH The Free Press, $3.95 (paper) Labor L o b b y i s t : The Autobiography of John W. Edelman JOSEPH CARTER Bobbs-Merrill, $9.95 Them and Us JAMES J. MATLES & JAMES HIGGINS Prentice-Hall, $6.95 Wilfrid Sheed has a pretty way with a metaphor...
...Now if only the democrats cou'.d take over in Russia . . . . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 REVIEWERS JOHN C. CORT has worked for labor groups and anti-poverty agencies, and is writing a book about his life and times...
...Boiled down, what they are saying to us is this, "Aren't you all ashamed now, you liberals, because you stood by without protest, if you didn't actually assist and applaud, when the CIO expelled its Communist affiliates...
...Matles and Higgins...
...At one point he writes, "And still a whiff of battle remains, like the smell of Absorbine, Jr., in a deserted locker room...
...I November 1974:114 There is no evidence of such a seachange in your book...
...Recruiting at black high schools more than at white, for example, only brings to black students "a knowledge of job opportunities that white students have had for years...
...Their case would be more persuasive if they were a bit more candid...
...I think it's a fine idea that the UE and the IUE (the AFL-CIO counterpart) cooperate in negotiations with GE and other electrical biggies, but don't blame McCarthyism for your expulsion(departure...
...I was reminded of this as I read a small spate of labor books, most of which dwell on the struggles of the past...
...Sometimes they try too hard, as when the authors reproduce the Southern sound of "really" as "rilly...
...Schnapper has brought labor's past alive--every glorious and inglorious moment of it...
...Aren't you ashamed...
...Sort of whip through it...
...This is her description of her first days in the plant: _9 . . They come through here hollering 'Nigger!' and talking all kind of ugly talk...
...After all, some of us are old enough to remember the NaziSoviet pact and some of the strikes that occurred during that period, like North American Aviation and Allis-Chalmers, one of whose objectives, if not the primary objective, let's face it, was to stop aid to the embattled enemies of Hitler...
...When the government requres it...
...Actually, the authors accept the argument that some preferential treatment is justified "to redress the injustice previously visited upon" black workers, with the cautionary warning that there may be situations where the need of the white worker is so great that it may cancel out the overall argument...
...And I thought these people were crazy...
...And I'd look at 'era and I would laugh...
...And eventually the white workers began to accept Mrs...
...Fuller for what she was, namely, a brave, intelligent young woman and a competent worker...
...MARK TAYLOR teaches in the English Department at Manhattan College...
...His book is full of good stuff and much good writing about famous people and famous battles long ago...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 5
