ALA Prospects; Contest in Umw; Charleston Strike
Williams, Jim
THE ALLIANCE FOR LABOR ACTION, after some initial false starts, has held its first conclave formally linking the world's two largest unions, the United Auto Workers and the International...
...The extent to which ALA is accepted by the IBT depends upon winning the allegiance of each of these chieftains...
...When he was named to replace John L. Lewis as the union representative on the Miners' Health and Retirement Fund last month, his first act was to vote, along with industry representative George Judy, to raise miners' pensions from $115 a month to $150...
...In others, Teamster drivers could pass the union word along into unorganized plants where they make deliveries...
...After all, the CIO prodded the old AFL into considerable improvements in the years between split and reunion...
...Because there was a civil rights movement and the blacks had a reputation for winning, they were actually looked up to...
...Its various district presidents call the shots as they see them, much more so with Fitzsimmons than with Hoffa...
...Yablonski managed to get a federal court order to compel the UMW officialdom to distribute his campaign literature to the entire UMW mailing list, so at least people will know he's around...
...To run for UMW president, you must first get nominated by 50 of the UMW's 1,200 locals...
...often in coordination with employer-highway lobbies...
...And the ALA res olutions on both the war and ABM are refresh ing contrasts to what one hears from AFL-CIO...
...IT Looxs as if coal miners may have a choice between candidates for president of the United Mine Workers this December, the first serious contest since John Brophy ran against John L. Lewis in the 1920s...
...HOORAY for the Charleston hospital strikers...
...His campaign literature and platform are excellent— pointing at the real issues in the campaign...
...Perhaps all we can say is, wait and see...
...More important, it indicates that it is still possible to forge real unity between labor and the black COMMENTS AND OPINIONS community in the South...
...We wish the ALA well and hope it prospers...
...Unlike the UAW, the Teamsters' union is a decentralized agglomerate of several more-orless independent fiefdoms...
...Other Southern organizers can relate similar instances...
...In community organizing the Teamsters have let the UAW carry the ball...
...They are big enough to afford whatever central services are required to do trade-union business, and not to be forced to depend upon bodies like AFL-CIO...
...Earlier this year, when there were a number of minor candidates in the race (most have dropped out), I asked a friend, who could possibly beat Boyle...
...How far will the Teamsters go—in action, not merely resolutions—when it comes to social change...
...The antagonists are the incumbent W. A. "Tony" Boyle and Joseph A. Yablonski, a UMW board member and director of the Miners' Nonpartisan League...
...Obviously, Harold Gibbons's Missouri Conference of Teamsters is very much in favor of ALA's announced social action programs, while others may not take this view...
...That's pretty refreshing in view of the hostilities between labor and blacks in the North...
...In fact, despite protests from a few people at AFL-CIO headquarters, this kind of grass-roots coopera tion is likely to continue with ALA...
...Nor is there reason to suppose that the split between ALA and AFL-CIO must automatically "harm" labor...
...Well, maybe...
...You can look for hot organizing activity in the South, among white-collar types and in certain "glamour" industries, like aerospace...
...The Teamsters have placed Bill Genoese, generally regarded their top organizer, as their man in the ALA's organizing structure...
...The readiness of black people in the South to fight for a union is no secret...
...The Charleston strike proves that blacks can build a solid union...
...Branton got good marks from the established civil rights groups, and if he didn't manage to abolish poverty single-handedly in the nation's capital he can hardly be blamed...
...Still, if Boyle & Co...
...He was campaigning for Tony Boyle at a series of hastily-called UMW "rallies" in the wake of the black-lung revolt...
...are to be defeated, it has to be an inside job...
...It was a major breakthrough in one of the worst antilabor areas in the nation...
...When that great task is achieved, then blacks will follow—so the argument goes...
...In fact, Yablonski has made 17 allegations to the Justice Department...
...A UMW spokesman denied that the benefit increase was strictly a vote-getting move, but admitted that the pension-fund benefits are "one of the main things the members have been yelling about...
...Yablonski, was the reply...
...But one is hard-pressed to remember anytime when Reuther and Hoffa got along...
...Yablonski meets these qualifications...
...As a result, Wiley A. Branton, formerly director of the poverty program in Washington, D.C., was named to head the Community and Social Action division...
...THE ALLIANCE FOR LABOR ACTION, after some initial false starts, has held its first conclave formally linking the world's two largest unions, the United Auto Workers and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
...He was the guy who introduced Boyle...
...But he was campaigning...
...It also has to be done by somebody who senses what is on the minds of the rank and file, and who is willing to respond to that...
...He has received slight, if any, mention in the UMWA Journal...
...Now he wants to bury him...
...It has to be done by a candidate with national exposure who knows the ins and outs of the union and has some following...
...The Teamsters really weren't hurt when they were expelled from the AFL-CIO over a decade ago...
...In any case, even if Yablonski achieves nothing else, he can claim some of the credit for pressuring Boyle into this move: which shows that even in unions where it's not always strongly in evidence, democracy is worth something...
...Any organization with the manpower and financial resources ALA has be hind it could become an important force...
...Let's hope the Charleston strike nails the myth that whites and blacks don't mix in Southern unionism, and let's hope that it is only a beginning...
...In many local areas AFL-CIO unions and Central Labor Councils continued to work closely with the Teamsters— to the point where it is difficult to determine what expulsion actually did accomplish...
...UAW, for its part, can still produce some splendid rhetoric, but too many of its projects seem to end about there...
...Hooray for the Local 1199 Drug and Hospital Workers, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the AFL-CIO, and the UAW (which contributed heavily to the strike fund), all of whom worked together to bring about a measure of victory...
...Teamster political action tends to be industry-oriented...
...Yablonski was then not running...
...The ideas and rhetoric of ALA, and the initial steps it has taken, all are fine for those so long disheartened by the cold-war outlook of the AFL-CIO...
...For the first time, Boyle and his cronies are having to beat the hustings, and to sell themselves to the rank and file...
...The ALA founding session produced a lot of resolutions, ranging from condemnation of the ABM system and the Vietnam war to more conventional economic and political proposals not all that different from those of the AFLCIO...
...That ain't true...
...The next day his running mate Elmer Brown of West Virginia, who is running for UMW vice president, had a meeting broken up by thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania...
...But he had not only been silent, he had just finished praising Caesar...
...And my money says that white workers in Charleston will get the message and organize too...
...There's reason to be hopeful and skeptical at the same time...
...The Journal's July 1 issue carried a half-dozen or so pictures of Boyle in its 24 pages—and in another recent 24-page issue BoyIe's picture appeared 31 times...
...It is one of the great shames of the labor movement that it has not been sufficiently attuned to this fact...
...In some places the Teamsters can control the flow of goods in and out of plants, and so perhaps pressure employers into union recognition...
...But rhetoric is still rhetoric, and "kind words butter no parsnips...
...In fact, one remembers instances of great hostility between the UAW and the Teamsters at almost every level...
...Yet one may be a little wary about the commitment of both unions when push comes to shove...
...And, again, the Teamsters don't have the reputation of a group of starry-eyed idealists reaching for new coalitions with blacks, youth, and the poor...
...The 100-day strike against the Medical College of South Carolina brought acceptance of union conditions and raises up to 70 cents an hour...
...Boyle, in his campaign, is not so unsubtle as to ignore the carrot entirely...
...That seems to be the reaction of other unions, few of which— apart from District 65, RWDSU (Retail, 380 COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Wholesale and Department Store Union), and the telephone workers of Pennsylvania—have rushed to connect with the ALA...
...The friendship was there all the time," hails UAW's Solidarity, "a truck driver tapping his horn, waving to a UAW neighbor on his way to the factory, and getting a big grin back...
...The main problem at this point is to decide what elements of the ALA idea are real...
...As a result unions have tended to leave black people unorganized in the hope of winning the whites...
...I recall, just a few years back, on an organizing campaign at a large electronics plant in Memphis, that many of the white workers looked to the black workers in the plant for leadership...
...In late June Yablonski was struck unconscious by a blow from behind while speaking at a miners' meeting in Springfield, Illinois...
...I place the most confidence in the plans for joint organizing by UAW and IBT...
...White racism in the South often gets handled with kid gloves by too many unionists...
...A Landrum-Griffin violation has been cited to the Justice Department...
...Some unions, though aware of it, were afraid to follow up: they didn't want to get the reputation among white workers of being a "nigger union...
...Yablonski was once president of UMW District 5, until forced out by Boyle some years back...
...it used to be 5, but Boyle had that changed after his candidacy was contested by candidate Steve Kochis in 1964...
...This approach could be highly effective in many areas...
...Then, almost overnight, Yablonski announced, in his initial speech: ". . . I cannot stand silent...
...Which brings us to Yablonski himself...
...To ignore the problems and differences between the UAW and the IBT is to invite confusion about ALA in the future...
Vol. 16 • September 1969 • No. 5
