What Can We Expect From the Unions?

...They are closed off from union membership either by fierce employer resistance, union indifference, or active bars to membership...

...And so I view the notion of an alliance between the civil rights movement and the trade unions with great skepticism...

...The answer is obvious: to do this would be to extend the union's role beyond that of functioning within the framework of present-day liberal capitalism...

...The unions' position vis-a-vis American foreign policy is derived from their commitment to the national anti-Communist consensus and their specific economic interests which are tied to the military economy...

...At the practical level, very little would be accomplished by it: such an alliance would necessarily limit the action of civil rights groups that might need to be directed against unions and, even worse, it could draw the civil rights movement into the kind of support the trade unions now give almost unquestioningly to the Johnson Administration on other issues...

...We can disagree in here but we cannot disagree outside the boundaries of the nation and have an effective foreign policy...

...No precise blueprint can be drawn up showing in detail how to increase membership participation...

...Taken as a whole, I believe that trade unions today continue to lag rather than lead in any movement to change society for the better whenever that movement requires a serious attack upon the status quo...

...When the demands of the Negroes for equality are expressed in a march on Selma, Alabama, some AFL-CIO leaders and some AFL-CIO staff members join them i For a detailed analysis of the NAACP's grievances against the AFL-CIO, see Congressional Record, House, Jan...

...Nor do I believe that the new and younger men on the AFL-CIO Executive Council will have any serious effect on the federation...

...To protect the specific interests of their members, they will sacrifice the larger good of society, just as for years the specific interests of the agricultural workers in California were regularly exchanged in the state legislature for benefits given to the industrial workers whose dues paid the salaries of the state AFL lobbyists...

...So, the leaders say, let's just concentrate on cutting down the hours of work and getting the best kind of conditions on the line that we can...

...Indeed, the basic reason why this generation views unions as being no different from any other institution of society is the unions' refusal to assume an active role in those issues which are of importance to the youth...

...If unions adopted the view of the teachers, they might begin to examine the work process on behalf of their constituency...

...and if they do speak, it is usually to duplicate, in less vulgar terms, what Meany says...

...And with the exception of Emil Mazey, who attempted to defend only the right of dissent, not one union leader publically attacked these actions of Meany or his supporters...

...In general, I think the posture of the radical toward the unions must be a severely critical one...

...That union was convinced that without braceros the growers could not harvest a tomato crop and if there are no tomatoes its members in the canneries will suffer from lack of work...

...It might not succeed...

...They are the farm workers, the laundry workers, the hospital workers, the car washers, the domestics, the menials of America, the millions of unemployed and under-employed workers...

...Understandably, what most auto workers want is to get out of the damn plant either by finding another job or by retiring as early as possible...

...1496-1499, testimony of Herbert Hill...

...Indeed, if there is any hope at all for a change from within the union structure, it will come from groups which most unions seem incapable, thus far, of either attracting or organizing: the professionals, such as the teachers and engineers, the techno-collar workers in the automated industries and the unskilled workers to whom a few unions have begun to turn their attention...

...If a movement to experiment with such devices does occur, it will come either through the challenging of leaders by other leaders or by pressure from the membership...

...On the race question, too, the unions have encountered serious internal difficulties...

...10-16, 27-28...

...Out of it there seems to have grown a membership commitment to the union and a willingness to work for it not seen since the early CIO period...

...On one of the most important international questions confronting the world today, American foreign policy, almost every union and union leader repeats only the official U.S...

...Union acceptance of welfare capitalism and union use of its col...

...The torpid tenth anniversary convention of the AFL-CIO in December, 1965, provided a nauseating demonstration of the atti 412 tude taken by union officials towards those who disagree with the Administration position on the war in Vietnam...

...The downfalls, with the help of the Landrum-Griffin law, of such union presidential stalwarts as Carey of the IUE, McDonald of steel, and Knight of OACW, has forced other union leaders to look at their own positions...

...And in the case of McDonald, at least, no one doubts that the most important reason for his defeat was the members' dissatisfaction with the kind of personal, top-level bargaining relationship McDonald had developed with steel management...

...In the case of foreign affairs, at least, the AFL-CIO policy is translated into action: the federation maintains an active international staff which, under the direction of the still Bolshevik ex-Bolshevik Lovestone, aggressively conducts its own international operations in true Bolshevik style...

...It was only in the bars or in their hotel rooms, where they couldn't be overheard, that some of the old CIO leaders expressed their indignation over the federation's completely jingoistic posture...

...Without the contract, the union is powerless, as power is viewed in America...

...At present, the only such instrument is Herman Benson's courageous journal, Union Democracy in Action, which survives only because of Benson's commitment to democratic ideals...

...But on balance, I remain deeply dissatisfied...

...As a result, not all the American workers are among the best treated and best paid in the world: Negroes, Indians, Puerto Ricans, MexicanAmericans and a few million whites, too, are outside the union constituency and so deprived of its benefits...

...Thus, unions do not question the current belief that the defeat of Communism can be accomplished by continually increasing military power...

...The UFT, unlike most unions today, does more than attempt to bargain collectively on the narrow issues of wages and hours...

...But despite these handicaps to efficiency, the involvement of as large a group as possible in the right to make significant decision seems, in the UFT, to be worth all the effort...

...With all the good they have done and all the good they are doing, the trade unions are no longer sufficiently alert to the new and different problems faced by workers and society...

...From the outside, however, pressure could be exerted for allowing such movements to take their natural course through the life of a union...

...Even though they may have the best intentions (which not all of them have), few national union leaders have exerted the kind of forceful leadership which could educate the members to harmonious relationships even at some cost to their reelection possibilities...

...Their view of what they want from their union is far different from that of, say, an auto worker, for whom work is only a means, and not a very desirable one, of getting a paycheck...

...As a radical I find them wanting and I believe that unless they make fundamental changes of direction, time will pass them by, leaving them as bystanders rather than participants in our history...

...It would be hellishly expensive...

...They recognize that some of the problems they confront today cannot be solved by traditional methods of collective bargaining and even though they pay very little attention to their critics, the current rumblings among union members certainly make them consider their own positions...

...The UFT is also attempting to establish that the individual teacherworker has a dignity which has been eroded in the past by the educational system itself...

...Indeed, the time is long overdue for a full-length analysis, from the radical viewpoint, of how Lovestone has conducted a private war, using union funds, against his former comrades and all others of whose politics he disapproves...

...It is certainly possible that without these provisions of the law, which now give union members certain minimal protections against election frauds, Carey might still be president of the IUE and McDonald still head of the Steelworkers...

...Perhaps one key to getting a higher degree of membership participation in union activities lies in giving the decision-making function significant effect on the lives of the individuals involved...

...position...

...it's all the international unions, too...

...But with rare exceptions, the vision of the union role has always remained only that...

...Another hopeful sign is the successful split of 20,000 West Coast paper workers from a union which they believed, with justice, was not representing them properly...

...The militant posture of Negroes toward unions in the past decade has forced the union leaders into a defensive position, especially because the national leadership often feels incapable of forcing more progressive policies on its constituent bodies if those policies may endanger intraunion relationships...

...Indeed, such a line of progression is considered eminently reasonable...

...The notion of contract implies a recognition by the union of its responsibilities for enforcement of the agreement it has negotiated with the employer, thus sometimes placing the union in the seemingly anomalous position of having to act against its own members when they violate the contract...

...Obviously, it's the best way yet devised for the employers, but why shouldn't unions make the work process itself a subject for study and bargaining in a far more intensive way than they do now, even to the point of proposing and insisting on radical changes...

...I do not underestimate the difficulties faced by those union leaders who participate in civil rights marches...

...11 Let us move on now to the unions' role in matters outside their specific concern with wages and working conditions...

...The union demands of the employer what the employer is capable, most easily, of giving to the union—changes, for the better, in wages, working conditions and future status of the workers...

...It justifies its overall demands by maintaining that the "products" of its members' work—well-educated children—cannot be created inside a school system where teachers must work at low wages under bad conditions...

...My own experience as a union representative convinced me that when important issues affecting the members did come up in a situation where they could exercise effective control, participation increased very rapidly...

...One of the grave difficulties the anti-poverty programs have encountered at the municipal level is that the unions are frequently aligned with the conservative elements in the society, both because they believe their economic interests may be menaced by some aspect of the poverty program and because their political alliances tend to be with those groups whom the new advocates of participation by the poor must confront...

...And the unions have no class identity, for a fundamental assumption of American life is that we are already a classless society...

...But it would be foolish to assume that the leadership of most unions will undertake such experiments if the cost might be the loss of their own power...

...With some notable exceptions, I am convinced that many unions respond to the Negroes' demand for equality in direct relationship to the pressure exerted upon them: the more pressure, the more unions have moved...

...The critics of unions have made their points repeatedly and with the exception of a few troglodytes there is a growing awareness among union leaders that something is amiss in the house of labor...

...But then, because fundamentally they are no more than an interest group, their stated social objectives frequently conflict with their objectives as representatives of their specific constituency...

...I was not deeply disappointed by the strong support given to the extension of the bracero program by the Teamsters' Union in California...

...see also "Racial Practices of Organized Labor in the Age of Gompers and After," by Herbert Hill, in Employment, Race and Poverty, edited by Arthur M. Ross with Herbert Hill (Harcourt, Brace and World...

...The price the union must pay for the benefits it gets for its members is that it becomes part of the productive system, able to help modify but not change in any basic way the nature of that system...

...And while automation and technology rapidly erode some of the traditional bases for union membership, the unions seem incapable of attracting the new techno-collar work force, or of recruiting from the activist youth generation which has played so prominent a role in the civil rights and student movements...

...So, too, is Meany's dictum that "it is up to all of us, on affairs outside the boundaries of this nation, to have one policy...

...George Meany's description of the serious academic critics of the President's foreign policy as those "who are either a little woozy upstairs or who are victims of Communist propaganda," is a typical representation of the AFL-CIO position...

...Indeed, if the new generation of radicals needed a verification of their belief that "liberal" union leaders are indistinguishable from "reactionary" ones, this convention gave it...

...But we should speak out openly and firmly...

...And in discussing the position of the AFL-CIO on foreign policy we are not talking about mere resolutions passed at conventions and board meetings or editorials in official newspapers...

...It would challenge some basic ideas about private property and the social structure...

...Thus, on two domestic issues today--the anti-poverty program and the race crisis—the trade unions are confronted with a serious dilemma...

...A genuine conflict of economic interests may exist between the poor, seeking work at any wage, and the unions whose function it is to keep wages high...

...Ironically, too, such challenges can now be made more effectively only because the government is legally in a position to make some judgments about how union elections are conducted, as the Labor Department did in the case of the battle between Carey and Jennings in the IUE...

...Indeed, because of this split, it is possible that the Western paper industry will now face, for the first time, a united group of paper, lumber, and sawmill workers, cooperating in their bargaining, instead of fighting among themselves as they have in the past...

...Not only were the protestors thrown out of the convention hall, but the pickets outside the hall had their signs torn away from them in the American Legion tradition...

...Obviously, if the members believe, correctly, that what they have to say is of no value in making decisions that affect themselves, they will not say it...

...But there is no need to recite again the dreary roster of union failures...

...Let Meany and other union leaders question the motives of those with whom they disagree...

...Throughout their history, American unions have stubbornly resisted the call that they become more than the instrument of a special, although very large and important, interest group operating only within the confines of the social order rather than seeking to break through those borders...

...The successful example of the United Federation of Teachers in New York indicates how far unions must depart from their usual pattern if they are to organize the growing number of professional workers...

...2 The notion of George Meany speaking as an authority on foreign policy illustrates one basic dilemma of the radical's relationship to the unions: they are a powerful and accepted pressure group, committed in rhetoric and frequently in action to many worthy, although limited social objectives, especially on the domestic scene, while simultaneously acquiescing in a foreign policy that, most charitably, can only be described as reactionary...

...Contract becomes king and, as a result, nearly all unions are indistinguishable from each other, at least in their relationship to the employer...

...It would be foolish for radicals to expect much more from the unions than a kind of generalized support for anti-poverty programs...

...Historically, it has been a basic premise for socialists that because the trade union constituency is composed of workers, unions must play a progressive role in society...

...singing, "We Shall Overcome...

...but when the demands of the Negroes for equality are expressed in a mass picket line stopping a construction job, the AFL-CIO leaders try feverishly to get the picket line called off...

...Thus it is understandable why the first demand made by unions in achieving status is for their recognition by the employer as an agency capable of negotiating a collective contract on behalf of individual members...

...At the national level, they are committed to a course which often meets with strong opposition from their local organizations and, frequently, they must defend local action or inaction which runs contrary to their stated policies...

...the turnover in leadership which seems an essential part of the process and the use of an unpaid executive board place a heavy burden upon the small paid staff...

...One of the great needs of the day is simply a vehicle for the exchange of information, if nothing else, so that the union members in the West Coast paper industry, fighting a brave battle against their leadership, might have the benefit of the knowledge gained by the New York City painters struggling to gain control of their own destiny...

...On this premise, then, the union is only one among a range of agencies by which an individual can better his lot...

...But no one ought to have any illusion that the successors to McDonald and Carey will try to lead the unions in markedly different directions from that in which they have been going...

...On domestic issues, the radical posture toward unions is a rather difficult one to define and carry out...

...The second important difference between the UFT and other unions is the way in which its decisions are made...

...It would be risky for the union leaders involved...

...The spectrum of official international union statements on foreign policy ranges from complete silence to denunciation of those who question the Administration and includes a few somewhat more apologetic statements which still end up by justifying the present policies...

...Are the new, highly automated, packing-house plants the only way meat should be brought to the con •10 sumer...

...2 For a very good short study of this question, see Sid Lens's article, "American Labor Abroad: Lovestone Diplomacy," The Nation, July 5, 1965, pp...

...Even today, men with a deep commitment to basic social change believe that the civil rights movement, for example, must depend on an alliance with the trade unions in order to succeed...

...Without a class self-concept, unions inevitably become the instrument of an interest group, thus fitting admirably into the pluralist view of American society...

...At present, the group is operating independently of the AFL-CIO but with the cooperation of local unions in Oregon and Washington...

...There is no doubt in my mind that if it had not been for the persistent attacks upon the AFLCIO's segregationist practices made by Herbert Hill of the NAACP's Labor Department, Negroes would still be barred from admission to those unions which, reluctantly, have opened a crack in the door to them, and would still not have access to equal opportunities at promotion in many others.' I believe, too, it could not be otherwise...

...So it is that very few union members view a fellow worker as "betraying" his class if he leaves the ranks of the union to become a foreman or supervisor...

...One of the inescapable facts about the American trade unions is that it seems to make little difference what set of ideas a union leader brings to the bargaining table: inexorably, the process of negotiation within the system endows the contractual relationship with primary importance...

...Generally, nothing...

...But the union does not demand that the employer abolish the assembly line...

...lective power to achieve benefits for its members within that economic order have had inevitable consequences...

...A heavy cost must be paid, always, for any attempts in this direction: frequently, the decisions arrived at by the group may oppose what the leaders desire...

...now they are on the board, they will be as silent as their predecessors...

...What is required is a willingness to experiment with new forms, even at the risk of inefficiency...

...American radicals have always dreamed of the role unions might perform in our society...

...And in some places where no such justice exists, some unions are still trying, even heroically, to bring workers the benefits they ought to receive...

...What the UFT is evidently seeking is to bring together, as closely as possible, the maximum amount of democracy with decision making...

...I know they are subject to severe attack from their membership...

...But that's what being a leader is all about anyway, so I see no reason to single out union leaders as deserving of any special sympathy in such situations...

...The one or two men among the new Council members who might have once spoken out on issues have been silent because they were afraid of antagonizing Meany and losing his support...

...But it can be argued, fairly, the AFL-CIO isn't just Meaney, Jay Lovestone, and the rubber-stamp Executive Board speaking out on foreign policy...

...Since welfare capitalism, in the American model, is incapable of dealing with its internal and external problems, no institution which is committed to working only inside that system can be effective in making the kind of radical changes that are needed today...

...But it should not be uncivil...

...Does the auto workers union have to accept, as an absolute truth, that the best way to build cars is with the assembly line...

...Agreed...

...I cannot get terribly indignant, either, when a union representative on the Mayor's Economic Opportunity Council in San Francisco uses his power to veto a suggestion that unemployed teenagers be used as runners in the public libraries because, for some years, the unions have been attempting to bring these jobs under union jurisdiction...

...31, 1963, pp...

...a society in which every man can achieve some substantial measure of material success...

...But teacher-members of the UFT are professionals, to whom work is not only a means of earning a living but an essential part of the process of self-fulfillment...

...In an assembly line factory, for example, a union might insist that the wages paid workers on the line be increased continually, that future pension rates be reasonable ones, and that the union be allowed to exercise some degree of control over how fast the lines move...

...It raises questions concerning the whole educational system in New York and it assumes that there is no separation between its members' working conditions and the condition of the entire educational system...

...Nevertheless, I am convinced that unions and unions alone are responsible for whatever industrial justice prevails for workers in America now...

...And what do they have to say about this question which so engrosses the nation today...

...And individual international unions must vie with each other in order to protect the jobs of their own members: a union representing missile workers insists that a larger missile program is required while the shipyard workers speak out in favor of a larger fleet...

...This assumption was rarely challenged, especially since unions for many years did exercise their power in ways that benefited masses of people who had no other spokesmen...