Black Upsurge in the Unions
Brooks, Thomas R.
BLACK UNION ACTIVITY is on the Increase. Blacks are organizing new locals among hospital workers, municipal employees, and in the retail and service trades. Black caucuses form at union...
...They cannot be understood apart from a specific industry, union, and in some instances a specific city in which they are found...
...The Longshoremen have had black vice-presidents for some time now, and the Laborers' union, as several other unions, now also has a black vice-president...
...The Ad Hoc Committee meets twice a year...
...After hearing the commission's findings, the convention picketed the two bars, and the executive council of the AFT maintained an all-night vigil...
...it also influences the current rise in black-worker activism in the community and among the unions...
...The Committee supported Abel against David McDonald in the 1965 steel union elections, and as a result secured a commitment from Abel to make changes in the union's hiring and promotional policies...
...It'll be worth watching...
...They wanted a young man and so I'm on the way out...
...The Ad Hoc Committee, he said, won Point Three, the reorganization of the union's Civil Rights Department, now headed by a black, Alex Fuller, and some gains under Point Two...
...I don't want to take time to prove the pect, reflects the political realities in the union: the present officers have another three years to go before elections...
...The spectrum of black involvement in the labor movement ranges from black agitation aimed at opening up jobs in the construction industry to the organization of hospital and municipal employees...
...At the time of my interview in midDecember, Hayes stressed the importance of mustering support for the GE strikers: "There are some black people being cut to pieces, black and white people in this strike...
...They meet regularly, and are still in the process of formulating concrete programs and goals...
...Now roughly 72 percent of the 6,800 bus drivers are black, but on taking into account the other CTA workers represented by the local, the racial breakdown is roughly 60 percent black, 40 percent white...
...It may yet have a greater impact on black participation in the labor movement than most of the developments featured in the liberal and Left press...
...Here you have a union with about 65-70 percent blacks and the leadership is virtually all white...
...They had a case," one black leader told me, "but they blew it...
...There's no denying some think like this, but in fact few heed the call of this hate sheet...
...To a trade unionist, the consequences often seem contradictory...
...This, as much as anything, explains bluecollar Wallaceism and conservative voting of home-owning workers on local tax-supported issues...
...What will the impact be of increasing black representation in the unions...
...Recently, some black trade unionists of some 25-30 unions formed the Black Labor Leaders of Chicago under the aegis of Operation Breadbasket...
...e Although the UAW and the Packinghouse Workers now work together, neither has quite forgotten the past...
...We have no intention of giving up without a fight...
...This would be a form of Jim Crowism in reverse and contrary to our rigidly-enforced policy of nondiscrimination...
...The initial get-together was impressive...
...So far, between-convention black caucuses exist inonly three major unions— those of the auto workers, the steelworkers, and the teachers.' This may reflect the state of accommodation to rising black memberships within the unions...
...Beatty's victory, in a way, is one of the consequences of the bus drivers' wildcat strike...
...Without black community pressure, for example, there would be no offer from the Chicago building trades of 4,000 jobs over the next year, including apprenticeships, journeyman status and openings for training...
...Jackson...
...Hayes also indicated that his group intended to get deeper into political action...
...In contrast, this kind of complaint invariably tumbled out in the first rush of words from black auto workers, whether DRUMites or members of the more traditional black caucuses in UAW De troit locals...
...My feeling that this won't happen is based on two things...
...How long do you think we can stand for this...
...According to Richard L. Rowan's study of Negro employment in the basic steel industry in the October 1969 issue of Industrial and Labor Relations Review, out of a total blue-collar work force of 361,995 in 1966, 58,273 or 16.1 percent were black...
...it is a Negro [current parlance, black] machine, and many of the incentives and constraints to which it responds can only be understood by the fact of its beingNegro...
...When and if they are, there may well be an intensification of racial hostilities...
...We think that you work within, fight within the unions to bring about the BLACK UPSURGE IN THE UNIONS kind of change that you want, rather than to try going off and form a counterforce...
...Polarization has occurred, but blue-collar Wallaceism is a response to developments outside the plant or the union...
...He also said that race was not voiced during the campaign, "although I'm sure it was on peoples' minds...
...Not only in Chicago, I might add...
...Balanced tickets are not exactly unheard of in American politics, nor within the steel union where ethnic politics often play a lively role at local and district levels...
...Chaired by Zeline Richard of Detroit, the AFT Black Caucus draws its chief strength from black teacher THOMAS R. BROOKS activists in Chicago, Detroit, and New York...
...As I read the 1968 convention debate, black delegates were simply asking recognition of that political fact...
...Hayes, at least, takes a dim view of a break-away-fram-the-unions tendency among black workers, though he believes the tactic may have some validity in specific situations...
...Black pride provides the thrust for black representation within the labor movement as it does in all our institutions...
...The Trade Union Leadership Committee has been in existence for over ten yearsand has successfully fought for black representation in the top councils of the auto union...
...We're not a caucus in the sense of engaging in internal union politics," Hill told me, "Our main focus is on COPE activity, but wealso recognize the thrust toward black representation...
...2 There are black separatist groups among the Chicago and New York teachers, but they have not had much success in wooing teachers away from the union...
...that you control the circle from which we have to run, and in order to break this crust there must be a place for us to run...
...Progress, of course, but first allow me some skepticism...
...This may be because the decentralized black Ocean Hill-Brownsville school district "fired" key leaders —Albert Vann, now teaching elsewhere, and Leslie Campbell, who is building a private black-separatist school in Brooklyn...
...Like many black activists, OperationBeadbasket ministers see the unions as a mixed blessing.' As Rev...
...The insurgent blacks called two walkouts in 1968—a four-day one in July and a 20day, knock-down drag-out affair beginning the day before the Democratic Convention and lasting until mid-September...
...The membership of the NSWPP is probably smaller than that of HRUM at Harvester (Harvester Revolutionary Union Movement), and both are tiny indeed...
...Since then, Sims has been appointed assistant director of the district...
...But he added, "I think the policing of thisagreement is going to be a continuing struggle...
...As the figures above indicate, this is happening to an increasing number of black workers...
...Black workers live in communities with drastic problems that cry out for radical solutions...
...We recognize that blacks, by virtue of their history, have legitimate and special concerns," AFT President David Selden told delegates...
...VicePresident Joseph P. Molony summed up the tion to the December meeting...
...Although Mooty retains his militancy, the Ad Hoc Committee, I would judge, has lost some of its zest...
...First, it hasn't happened although there are more black trade unionists than black parishioners in the churches under attack or black students in assaulted universities...
...we have never opposed it...
...Drafted by Aaron H. Jackson of Detroit and Rayfield Mooty of Chicago, the program calls for: (1) Negroes on the Executive Board...
...But the Federation apparently survives only in fervid references in the New Left press...
...When the director of the Baltimore District 8 retired, they saw an opportunity...
...There are 38,000 steelworkers in this district...
...And they are going to use all the resources at their command to get answers to their problems...
...Mooty was a charter member of his aluminum local union, and has been shop steward and president during his 30odd years of union service...
...One would let it go at that if it were not for the deplorable tendency among academics, New Leftists, and others to see all elections which blacks lose as stolen...
...The Rank-and-File Committee's attorney, David Lubash, assured me that the group is pushing ahead with its drive for decertification of TWU...
...Jackson has been active as a negotiator, shop steward, and local officer for over 20 years...
...The black liberal challenge to the Dawson machine creates a black communityconflict...
...We have not been in the union business all these years for nothing," said one officer...
...over 140 drivers were sus pended, and 42 were fired...
...So far, this brief flyer at black caucus activity has not taken root, partly because of the difficulty in pulling together a diffuse rank and file...
...Where black workers are to be found in concentrated numbers still remains a guess...
...A black UAW representative who was elected a shop steward in that same local told Brendan Sexton that several of his strongest white supporters wore Wallace buttons during the 1968 Presidential campaign...
...White workers, true, are often resentful of the change...
...Sims lost, by a bit more than 1,500 votes...
...Operation Breadbasket, for example, supported a group of Cook County hospital workers, members of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), who walked out in the course of a jurisdictional fight with the BSEIU (Building Service Employees International Union...
...When questioned, however, the Committee's spokesmen did acknowledge the existence of discrimination...
...Racism exists among white trade unionists, but I would not say that the efforts of white union officers to continue in office despite significant shifts in the racial composition of their locals are simply racist or a manifestation of white backlash...
...THOMAS R. BROOKS (2) full integration at all levels within the various districts and national offices as department heads and in policy-making...
...gain seniority, they tend to move upward, out of the ranks of the unskilled into those of the semiskilled and skilled...
...A TA spokesman told me he estimates it at 50 percent...
...one each was elected...
...nor would the recent trade union successes among hospital workers in Charleston or among municipal employees in Memphis have been possible without black community support...
...The struggle for black representation within 241," he added, "had the support of other trade unionists, and could have been won...
...But I would like to think this was a victory not just for blacks but for younger workers, for a better deal...
...To be sure, grievances aplenty exist in steel mills, but they don't seem to have that persistent, burr under-the-saddle quality of grievances caused by the assembly line...
...A number of its key activists are now on the union staff, and there doesn't seem to be any sizable steam building up behind the one remaining point still demanded in the Ad Hoc Committee's program.4 This, I sus 4 I am intrigued by the absence of any complaint about discrimination in the plants or local unions, both in the Ad Hoc Committee's program and in my conversations with Committee members...
...As Wayman Benson put it, "We felt we had run into a stone wall and so we decided to try and form an independent union...
...Four other black men were elected to the Division's nine-man executive board...
...The Flint UAW local that endorsed Wallace (and later rescinded the endorsement) did not go on to adopt resolutions favoring the exclusion of black workers from the plant or the union...
...The number of black workers with seniority and trade union experience has grown, and blacks are no longer automatically last hired and first fired...
...8 Here one might mention the Black Labor Federation, which announced to the press in fall 1968 that it was considering calling a one-day general strike of black workers...
...The AFT council is considering guidelines in order to guarantee minority representation on bigcity locals, and it has reaffirmed its commitment to the AFT's 1968 decentralization resolution, which urged AFT assistance to communities that are seeking responsibility for educational decisionmaking, keeping in mind teacher tenure and due process...
...There is, however, a parallel with the racial balance within Division 241 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, and it seems likely that a majority of the working members are black while a majority of the retirees :are white...
...At first, the Concerned Transit Workers concentrated on the issue of representation...
...We do try to help Operation Breadbasket," Charles Hayes, chairman of the group, told me, "but our prime concern is to move the trade union movement into some positive direction, some implementation of the things we've talked about over the years both in terms of employment and of leadership within the union movement itself...
...Those who hold this view cite the December 1969 elections within a sister local, Division 308 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents 3,800 rapid transit workers in Chicago...
...OPERATION BREADBASKET was launched several years ago, following the late Martin Luther King's frustrating Chicago summer...
...In fairness, I would credit the understandable impatience—and lack of experience—among the CTW rank and file and leadership, too...
...Another key activity among black trade unionists is a growing involvement in political action...
...The Black Caucus raised questions about such issues as community control of schools, employment opportunities on the AFT staff, minority representation on policy-making bodies in big-city locals, and AFT support for black teachers punitively transferred following the 1969 strike in New Orleans...
...Among other things, the Rank-and-File Committee charged that TWU failed to represent its black and Puerto Rican members...
...Last year, several ex-BSEIU staff members joined a rival Teamsters-sponsored organizing drive, drew up a bill of complaint against the BSEIU, and circulated it among BSEIU activists as "black demands...
...Several black trade union leaders told me privately that they blamed "the ministers" for the CTW loss...
...There is some question as to black strength within the union...
...Back in early 1968, a group of black bus drivers decided to challenge the white lead 7 The UAW, after all, is a heavy supporter of Operation Breadbasket...
...In New York City, where the Afro-American Teachers gained support among black teachers and also some notoriety as a result of the school decentralization hassle, little has been heard from these militants in recent months...
...Fewer than 10,000 members voted, even though there was both a district and a national union contest...
...There are a lot of problems to be considered when people try to pull out and start their own union...
...But by blasting what the workers by and large THOMAS R. 13ROOK.S saw as gains, the CTW began to lose its following...
...This is also profoundly true of the blackopposition to Dawson...
...Chicago politics sets the scene, and one should keep in mind that black politics in Chicago differ in style from black politics elsewhere...
...However, Hugh Hegarty defeated black candidate Clarence Knox for secretary-treasurer, the only other full-time office...
...There are another 500,000 or perhaps 750,000 blacks in unions affiliated with the 3 million-member teamsters', auto and chemical workers' union, the American Labor Alliance...
...Operation Breadbasket is communityoriented, and though political in blackpowerish fashion (the Rev...
...most of them work for Bethlehem Steel, and 35-37 percent are black...
...Black craftsmen will find, as white craftsmen did before them, that a tight rein on jobs, on entry and craft structure pays off...
...As one driver told me, "Why throw away all that's been built up all these years...
...Understandably, black workers frequently turn to him when in need of advice or support...
...Mooty grumbled to me about a lack of meetings with leaders of the union, but conceded that there had been some changes...
...3) reorganization of the Civil Rights Department...
...Many white workers, especially those in powerful unions and in well-organized industries, are content to leave job questions to the unions, while seeking solutions to social and economic problems elsewhere...
...Neither Beatty nor Burns is certain whether blacks comprise a majority of Division 308's membership...
...Beyond this, one's hopes ought not rise...
...In 1954, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of a total nonwhite work force of 6.3 million, there were 316,000 craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers...
...union spokesmen cite industry figures that suggest that 16 percent or roughly 200,000 members are black...
...Some of the response is just an ordinary political wish to hold power...
...Two small unions, the 6,000-member Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the 3,000-member United Transport Service Employees, are virtually all black...
...The militants greeted the appointments with customary derision—"tokenism," "Uncle Toms," etc...
...In sharp contrast to DRUM, whose members are under thirty and fresh to employment in the auto industry, the steelworkers' Ad Hoc Committee consists largely of older men with considerable trade union experience...
...Second, white workers just aren't loaded with the guilt feelings of white ministers and other middleclass types who are, for good or bad, vulnerable to supermilitancy...
...it is not a simple reflection of the labor/ liberal vs...
...The building trades may swing a little as a result, but I doubt very much that the inherently conservative character of those unions will change...
...Steelworkers who had mounted pickets at the 1968 Chicago steel union convention...
...The black-labor alliance will only work politically if there is black representation on all levels of the COPE decision-making apparatus...
...Significantly, the Breadbasket teachers dropped their withdrawal plea, and their current anti-unionism has an old-fashioned schoolmarm ring...
...In the street-car era, the local was almost entirely white but in recent years the Chicago Transit Authority has hired more and more blacks...
...The relative absence of widespread blackcaucus activity at the national level reflects the present level of black power or consciousness, the absence of a dramatic issue to pull people together, and the difficulty of doing so when memberships are widely scattered...
...Now they can go up several, at $250 each jump, and after three years they may be permanently appointed without examination if their work is satisfactory...
...Within the Building Service Employees International Union, for example, blacks participate within the local unions as local leaders and on local organizing and service staffs...
...The Institute probably reaches more black unionists than any other single national organization...
...In order to run we are asking you now to give us the second place on the ticket and we will assure you that we will put a Negro in office...
...Leander Sims, a black Steelworker union representative, ran against Edward Plato with the full backing of the Abel administration...
...Jesse Jackson and his Operation Breadbasket...
...I have a leaflet before me, distributed by the National Socialist White People's [Nazi] party at a Harvester plant, which says, among other things: "Not content to take our jobs away, these Black savages have beaten our kids in school, terrorized our women on the street and run us out of our own neighborhoods where we grew up and raised our families...
...There are, unfortunately, no precise figures on black trade union membership...
...By and large, most union officers continue in office because they do a job, and not because of their ethnic origin or color...
...Local union leadership is a power base, and if that base can be mobilized for action to solve community problems black labor leaders are going to act...
...All these officers are elected every four years by a membership referendum...
...As one young lady told me, "We get all the benefits anyway...
...Some 45 AFL–CIO unions have "substantial" black memberships—that is, a larger percentage of black members than the 11-12 percent rate of black participation in the labor force...
...Moreover, the CTW, in attempting to take black bus drivers from Division 241, opposed what nearly everyone conceded would be the sure ratification of a new contract in 1969...
...There is only one Rev...
...Since there isn't, one should be appointed...
...To give a few examples: the State, County and Municipal Employees (250,000), the merged Meatcutters–Packinghouse Union (488,000), Letter Carriers (168,000), Pos tal Clerks (139,000), International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (440,000), Build ing Service Employees International Union (398,000), the Laundry Workers (25,000), possibly the Steelworkers (1.1 million), and the American Federation of Teachers (140, BLACK UPSURGE IN THE UNIONS 000) are among unions with 20 percent or more black memberships...
...So it would be—yet this view ignores certain realities...
...The AFT leadership will respond calmly and in good faith...
...The Rank-and-File Committee membership is said to be 90 percent black and Puerto Rican, which by itself is not sufficient to tag the group as either a black caucus or black separatist...
...Beatty and his supporters decided to challenge Bums at the time of the wildcat in August 1968...
...Significantly, the latter endeavors have been rooted in Chicago's black precincts, ever since Willoughby Abner, now a vice-president of the American Arbitration Association and formerly of the UAW staff, challenged the Democratic party machine in the 1950 primary election to decide the party's candidate for state senator...
...a The American Teacher, in its October 1969 and January 1970 issues, carried full accounts of convention developments and of the special meeting...
...He agreed that the Chicago Plan, which hopefully will bring 4,000 blacks into the building and construction trades, was a victory...
...The unions have not been hit as hard by black militancy as have the churches, the poverty programs, and the universities...
...Black caucuses form at union conventions, and there are national black caucuses within the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, and the American Federation of Teachers, and black rank-and-file rebellions have erupted in the New York and Chicago transit unions...
...Two black labor leaders, A. Philip Randolph of the Sleeping Car Porters and Frederick O'Neal, president of Actors' Equity, sit on the AFL-CIO executive council...
...B B LACK CAUCUSES IN THE STEEL AND TEACHERS' UNIONS are a consequence of the overall rise in the level of black consciousness— but, so to speak, at one remove...
...Black steelworkers picketed the 1968 steel union convention in Chicago, and there was a sharp debate on the convention floor over black representation on the union's executive board, which consists of 3 executive officers and 30 district directors—all white...
...Illinois has no state labor relations system, and the National Labor Relations Board has no jurisdiction over local transportation systems...
...S THE CHICAGO EXPERIENCE sui generis or I ,a harbinger of things to come...
...At the convention, the Ad Hoc Committee, the black caucus within the Steelworkers, proposed the institution of a second vice-presidency, to be held by a black...
...Earlier, Operation Breadbasket leaders had urged black teachers not to support an AFT strike, and subsequently urged them to withdraw from the union altogether...
...A little of both...
...is a sect with factions in severalauto plants...
...Others have found, as one told me, "better jobs...
...Abel himself barely won the district, and it is clear that Sims lost because black steelworkers didn't come out to vote for him in the expected numbers...
...we seek change for all workers...
...As to staff, there are 3 blacks among the 12 persons employed in the organizing department—a director of field services, a national representative, and an apprentice organizer...
...This, at least, seems to be the case with Chicago's rebel bus drivers...
...The Ad Hoc Committee claims that 20-25 percent of the union's 1.1 million members are black...
...On the whole, the union leadership seems to have done so...
...On reflection, however, I would place the Rank-and-File Committee for a Democratic Union, of the Transport Workers Union's New York City Local 100, among traditional left-wing caucuses rather than among point, but I suspect it has something to do with the history and nature of each of the two unions...
...Many of the black teachers are temporary appointees and, until the current contract, were unable to move beyond the first pay grade...
...but this did nothing to ease black suspicions that the nearly allwhite pensioners tended to vote as a bloc for the present administration...
...Between 1965 and 1969 the total nonwhite work force rose from slightly over 7.7 million to almost 8.6 million, while the number of black laborers dipped from 985,000 to 859,000, the number of black craftsmen rose from 520,000 to 752,576, and that of black operatives from 1.6 million to 2.1 million...
...As one spokesman, Wayman Benson, put it, "This is nothing different than the old plantation system...
...As workers This article was written under the auspices of the Metropolitan Applied Research Center, Inc., with the assistance of a grant from the Ford Foundation...
...The Black Caucus, angered by a refusal of two bars to serve black delegates, wanted to know: "Why, instead of taking some affirmative action in protest, did the AFT set up a study commission to evaluate the indignities suffered in New Orleans by many black delegates to this convention...
...When Sexton asked if they were still friends and supporters, he said, "Hell, yes...
...There will be more "two Irishmen against two blacks" contests within our unions, but if blue-collar Wallaceism grows it will be because of social and economic developments outside the unions and not because of hotly fought elections within...
...Of these 172,683 workers, 30,719, or 17.8 percent were black in 1966...
...BLACK UPSURGE IN THE UNIONS ership of the local union, the 12,000member (3,500 retirees and 8,500 working members) Division 241 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, AFL–CIO...
...Perhaps because all these older caucuses are integrated, or because the New Caucus had preempted the role of black spokesman, it was not until the 1969 AFT convention in New Orleans that a caucus was formed on the basis that "everybody black ought to belong...
...it drew 350 to its last meeting at Gary, Indiana, in July 1969...
...TWU secured a good contract over the Christmas holidays...
...Steelworkers' President I. W. Abel drew applause when he declared, "I didn't hold office all these years as a Welshman, but as a steelworker elected to office...
...If the construction unions' attitudes are not changed, they leave black people no alternative but to form a counterforce, a separate organization in order to train themselves and to get the jobs to which they are entitled...
...While he expressed a willingness to work with COPE on voter registration drives and the like, he pointedly declared, "We have reached a point of maturity where we as black people can no longer rubber-stamp for COPE necessarily...
...According to Joseph S. Carnegie, a black conductor with 20 years' service with the New York City Transit Authority, roughly 70 percent of the Transit Authority's 28,000 employees are black or Puerto Rican...
...Some Packinghouse locals failed to come through for Abner because of his anti-Stalinism, and because of this, subtle important politicaldifferences exist to this day within the liberal/ labor coalition...
...Robert Cavins, 31, a driver with five and a half years experience, was named temporary president of the regrouped CTW...
...Black steelworker Raymond Freeman said: We can understand what you are talking about when you say run for the office, but you also understand...
...The Committee, founded in 1964, has a simple, three-point program that does not seem to have broad mass appeal...
...I'm still hopeful that the leadership situation can be cleared from within," he told me...
...Burns, who returned to his job as a motorman, at tributes his defeat to the generation gap...
...The provision is in the international union's constitution...
...The AFT provided airfare and hotel and living expenses for a five-member Black Caucus delegaWhile in the AFT relations between the leadership and the Black Caucus appear amicable, this cannot be said of their counterparts in the Steelworkers...
...they don't react politely to being called "Honkie," and the surfacing of subterranean racism is not unknown...
...Last year, the group decided to challenge TWU's bargaining rights, and collected some 7,000 signatures calling for a representation election—some 2,000 short of the number needed...
...But, as yet, they do not have anywhere near enough valid signatures, and I suspect that the precontract negotiation blues, which enabled them to gather as many as they did, are no longer sung so loudly on the City's transportation lines...
...Currently, so far as I can discover, they confine their activity to the promotion of Afro-American history courses, the teaching of Swahili, and the like...
...It happens—but not as often as some think...
...The last vacancy on the national representatives' staff was filled by a black...
...Black-caucus activity in such cities as Detroit, Chicago, and New York fall somewhere between these two forms of community involvement...
...What happens, of course, depends in part on white reaction...
...The powerful 450,000-member Laborers' International Union and the 50,000member International Longshoremen's Association are about 40 percent black...
...We've been preparing a long time to assert ourselves legally," Beatty said...
...Actually, the latter area pale reflection of the former...
...Yet, the appointments were not without effect, and -a number of black drivers believe it is a matter of time before they take over anyway...
...1 For my report on the United Auto Workers, see "DRUMbeats in Detroit," DISSENT, January— February 1970...
...Teachers too, black and white, contribute as individuals to Operation Breadbasket...
...Quite legitimately, the CTW might have claimed credit for the $4-an-hour settlement—after all, wildcats are an index of militancy—while pointing out inadequacies in the new 'agreement...
...B B LACK CAUCUSES IN THE TRADE UNIONS are still a new development...
...He holds together much that might otherwise fly apart...
...At the December meeting, the Black Caucus asked for an increase in the AFT's civilrights staff and requested that no speaker be invited to the union's next convention in Pittsburgh who did not support that city's United Coalition demands for improved skilled-trades apprenticeship opportunities for minority groups...
...Unlike other cities, however, Chicago is the best example of the new black community involvement in tradeunion affairs...
...even in the midst of fat-cat unions, we still see some light shining...
...a human dynamo...
...and the Concerned Construction Workers...
...In Chicago Operation Breadbasket has become an institution, and enjoys a success d'estimelargely through the dynamism of the Rev...
...Black workers turned up in growing numbers to protest a union rule that allows pensioners to vote, only to be constantly ruled out of order...
...If this is not the case, then the unions are indeed in a bad way...
...Most of them are local union officers, and a number are black staff people...
...Many of its leaders are old-time leftwingers within the union, and in 1965 four out of six candidates for top office on the Committee's slate against the leadership of the Local were white...
...Blacks have been active since the founding of the Packinghouse Workers, and three blacks sit on the executive board of the Meatcutters now merged with them...
...The League of RevolutionaryBlack Workers (the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, et al...
...Daley struggles...
...Two or three thousand people turn out every weekend to hear him preach, and at times to boycott or march at his behest...
...Operation Breadbasket pledged its continuing support, and a drive was launched for signatures demanding a representative election...
...AFLCIO spokesmen estimate that 2 million out of a total membership of almost 14 million are black...
...The leadership of the local, however, continued predominantly white...
...Then, there are the Chicago political machines, refusing to die in the face of liberal onslaughts...
...In Chicago suburbs, black teachers are among the most militant supporters of AFT organizing drives...
...Leonard Beatty, 45, a black motorman with 18 years on the job, defeated John A. Burns, a 43-year motorman and former president of the local, by a vote of 1,124 to 1,098...
...Jackson...
...The Daley machine and its black counterpart, the machine of Congressman William L. Dawson, cast a long shadow.5 Like the black community, black organized labor divides politically into various components, notably the old AFL and some CIO unions, strongly tied to the Daley/Dawson machines, while the UAW, Packinghouse Workers, and other liberal unions support reform efforts...
...Charles Hayes, a vice-president of the merged Butcher Workmen, Meatcutters, and Packinghouse unions and chairman of the newly formed Operation Breadbasket Black Labor Leaders of Chicago, felt he had to support the CTW strike...
...Black workers are no more exempt from the pulls of class solidarity in the plant—and the pride of home-ownership— than white workers...
...But this, so far, has not seemed politically feasible...
...As one member of the National Ad Hoc Committee put it, "Sure, it's best for a Negro to be elected, but there's not much chance of that...
...These factors play a role, but ordinarily not to the exclusion of all others...
...I am sure that some of the black youngsters now entering building-trades apprenticeships will end up running local unions—or become contractors...
...I think we must support candidates based on their commitments to the needs of the total community, not just on the basis of political expediency...
...As Beatty told reporters, "It was two Irishmen against two blacks...
...Abner lost, but the UAW has been engaged in precinct work in the black community ever since, sometimes supporting Democratic regulars and at other times white and black dissi dents.6 The machine-reform constellation not only dominates Chicago politics...
...He's a phenomenon," is how a black trade unionist described the energetic director of Operation Breadbasket to me...
...Jackson is said to have political ambitions), it has not injected itself into the unions, as would-be radicals often dream of doing, and as such politicals as the DRUMites and Black Panthers are doing in a small way...
...An injunction helped break the strike...
...There is no legal mechanism for calling a representation election, and any other way of gaining representation rights is forestalled by circumstances...
...CTW's case for an election and for reinstatement of those fired is being pressed in the courts...
...BLACK UPSURGE IN THE UNIONS new black caucus groups...
...However, the Abel-Burke-Molony administration has shown some awareness of the need for black representation at top policy levels of the union...
...This thrust gains a lift from a continuing ground swell of black employment in unionized industries and industries ripe for unionization...
...For an insight into the relationship between developments in the black community and within the unions, one must look to the cities where black workers live and work...
...With negotiations in the offing, the CTW also began agitating about the mishandling of grievances and demanded cleaner and safer buses, uniform allowances and improved sick leave and hospitalization plans...
...all that remains is to wait for a director to retire in a district where a black would have a reasonable shot at election...
...Of 111,047 craftsmen in the industry, 6,586 or 5.9 percent are black...
...At this point, the CTW changed its goal...
...The proposal was overwhelmingly defeated, largely on the grounds that such a post would be "appointive" rather than elective...
...The Caucus further asked for a special meeting with the AFT Executive Council, which took place in December 1969...
...More blacks, perhaps, will add weight to the discernible sea change already underway among building tradesmen, away from the Republican party to the Democrats...
...Human passions being what they are, one ought to add a cautionary note...
...Black community leaders, however tentatively, have given advice to black workers and have been drawn into the internal affairs of several key unions...
...Such a division would cut into the power of the district director affected, and the blacks in the union simply do not yet have the political muscle to move the leadership in that direction...
...the Afro-American Employees Committee at Hotpoint, veterans of a one-day sit-down...
...BLACK UPSURGE IN THE UNIONS prevailing view: "We are opposed to any procedure that would establish an office in our union based on race, national origin, religion, or color...
...The building trades, however, might be an exception...
...For one thing, Division 241 did not simply sit back...
...2 At the 1969 AFT convention, the Black Caucus drew up a list of questions, which was considered at a hastily-summoned executive council meeting...
...We are not a black separatist group...
...Blacks are organizing new locals among hospital workers, municipal employees, and in the retail and service trades...
...Among those present were spokesmen for the Concerned Transit Workers, fresh from a 20-day wildcat strike...
...Out of 69,807 laborers or unskilled workers, 19,356, or 27.7 percent were black...
...Norman Hill, associate director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, says that the response among black trade union activists to the Institute's political education programs has been "tremendous...
...The National Ad Hoc Committee played only a small role in the Sims-Plato contest: it had no rank-and-file backing in the district...
...The Institute has set up a new regional office in Chicago, with Maida Springer Kemp as field director, and it now plans to open offices in other black trade union centers around the country...
...Operatives—that is, semi-skilled workers--comprised 37.1 percent of all employees in basic steel...
...But, on balance, they do want more government action along a broader front than their blue-collar white fellows...
...Calvin Morris, shepherd of Operation Breadbasket's tradeunion flock, told striking hospital workers, "Much of the labor movement is obese, fat and tired...
...Create a new office and name a black to fill it on the administration slate," was, in essence, what they said...
...DEVELOPMENTS IN CHICAGO are radically different from anything currently observable in New York, and somewhat different from what goes on in Detroit...
...And they too will want buildings built, a feeling shared with the dominant real estate interests of every city...
...Rather, Operation Breadbasket is drawn in when dissidents are in trouble and need outside support...
...If we don't concern ourselves with changing this kind ofattitude [GE's take-itorleave-it stand], this is obviously going to affect every trade unionist—black and white...
...I never believed in wildcat strikes...
...Both in transit and among teachers, Operation Breadbasket adherents did try for a time to pull their black fellow workers out of long-established unions, but both efforts have pretty much subsided...
...He thought the second wildcat a serious mistake, and the decision to break away catastrophic...
...Some of the Council's answers to the Black Caucus may be of interest: in the New Orleans matter, the Council reported full support of the penalized strikers and cited the assumption of two-thirds of the $5,367 in legal costs incurred so far...
...Yet, while heavy concentrations of black steelworkers exist in Baltimore, Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, and elsewhere, there are no predominantly black steel-union districts...
...It is also important to note that the last negotiations in Chicago eased, if they did not remove entirely, one major black teachers' grievance...
...As Carnegie wrote to the New York Times, "We welcome white participation both in leadership and membership in this struggle...
...Yet, the Lord never leaves us comfortless...
...Soon, however, everything bogged down...
...When asked if this isn't what collective bargaining is about, Hayes laughed, "Yes, that's it...
...Conceivably, the union might carve out a new district, as the UAW has done, to expand its executive board and ensure the election of a black...
...Operation Breadbasket provided counsel and office space for the strikers...
...Their current interest is in improving education for black children...
...As in Detroit and other urban areas in the North, Chicago unions are experiencing, on one hand, a sharp rise in black rank and file and, on the other, the continuation in leadership of the preceding white, often ethnically-conscious, generation 5 But as James Q. Wilson perceptively pointed outin Negro Politics (1960): "the Dawson machine is not a simple replica—albeit a highly successfulone—of any political machine...
...As an arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation Breadbasket feeds the hungry, boycotts for jobs, encourages black self-help, and engages in a variety of antipoverty endeavors...
...This issue, however, isn't likely to become acute until preparations are made for the next convention, and indeed may be moot by then depending on how well the agreement between the building trades and the black community to provide 1250 jobs works out...
...a million nonfarm laborers...
...a constitutional amendment that would open a spot for a black has little chance of success in the interim...
...Within the American Federation of Teachers, which has a tradition of caucus activity, the Black Caucus enjoys the quasi-official standing afforded each of the other three major caucuses in the union—the majority, proadministration Progressive Caucus, the conservative National Caucus, and the New Caucus which considers itself to the Left of the other two...
...Moreover, a fair number of black trade union activists have been drawn into orbit, so to speak, around the charismatic Rev...
...Some of those fired have formed a bus company of their own, doing charter work...
...Nonetheless, greater black participation in the unions will reinvigorate social unionism...
...Division 241 President James J. Hill named blacks as second vice-president, assistant recording secretary, assistant financial secretarytreasurer, and to four board posts...
...THOMAS R. BROOKS I don't believe they are...
...THOMAS R. BROOKS of unionists...
...All the top officers were white—president, two vice-presidents, a recording secretary, and a financial secretary —and out of 26 executive board members only four were black...
...1.3 million operatives and kindred workers...
Vol. 17 • March 1970 • No. 2
