Labor's Decade-Maybe
Sexton, Patricia Cayo & Sexton, Brendan
Union Prospects for the Seventies IF WE READ our stars right, the seventies ought to see, not the dawning of the age of Aquarius, but a new era for the working man. Of course, some...
...Yet the truth is that the CIO, and those AFL unions that grew along with it, transformed industrial America...
...a Irving L. Horowitz, "Condition of the WorkingClass in the U.S...
...Many of them are certain to have a real fling at worker control...
...A more difficult question...
...It rests upon the group, upon the organized "society" forged by the mine, mill and factory...
...Rising labor costs resulting from unionization also will create pressure for technological innovation and improvement in public employment...
...While many liberals and radicals in New York, for example, chose the conservative Goodell only because of his position on the war, George Meany made a strong pitch for Ottinger the dove against Buckley the hawk...
...Retail Clerks from 300,000 to 550,000...
...What the union apologists might say with justice is, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...
...in GM, 39 percent...
...Barring a dragged-out recession, unions will continue to grow during the seventies...
...In this case the Department of Labor reports show only percentages of the "nonagricultural work force...
...the Postal Clerks from 97,000 to 166,000...
...In the American politicial spectrum, unions have been well over to the Left...
...Blue-collar workers, we were told, had grown fat, dispirited, conservative, maybe "neofascist...
...In any event, we were told, blue-collar workers were no longer of much significance because of the "changing nature of the work force" BRENDAN SEXTON AND PATRICIA CAYO SEXTON and the disappearance of their jobs...
...Overlooked by labor's critics, however, is the present state of union affairs, obscured as it is by the constant repetition of old charges that are no longer accurate or valid...
...Social scientists discovered and rediscovered the working class as authoritarian, anti-civil libertarian, white racist, prowar, or in other ways generally repugnant...
...Its ends are the "good life...
...Forced to play coalition politics in order to maximize their political influence, unions have given some impetus to the drive by blacks for political recognition...
...Support full employment...
...Organized workers won some measure of control over their conditions of work and a solid hope that they can win much more...
...Where blacks become a ma 5 Harold M. Baron, with Harriet Stulman, Richard Rothstein, and Renard Davis, "Black Powerlessness in Chicago," Trans-action, November, 1968...
...the Teamsters grew from 1.4 million to 1.7 million...
...A sparsity of general ideas and a lack of any "ideology" kept the trade-union movement from being obtrusively vocal and permitted mesmeric political groups to look upon it as something of no great importance...
...By 1980 it will probably come to 4 million...
...Automation, the nightmare of the fifties, will probably have no more profound an impact on the work force in the seventies than it had in the sixties...
...Less money was available to pay organizers and the much higher legal expenses incurred in every new organizing campaign...
...The NEA is rapidly transforming itself into a real trade union...
...During the period 1964-66, for example, 96 unions gained and 55 lost members...
...Make direct grants to the states and local communities for the support of urban improvements...
...Union members were especially vulnerable to this kind of economic manipulation...
...Noncandidate Reuther was challenged to and participated in national radio and TV debates with both Goldwater and Senator Robert Taft...
...When we measure discrimination we deal not only with blacks and whites, but with all shades of grey as well, and the apologists are wrong in attempting to whitewash union flaws that might better be exposed to the light...
...If there is a prominent liberal office-holder in the country who got there without union support, we can't think of his name...
...Raise the minimum wage to $2 an hour...
...We think, by contrast, that scholars and others increasingly are rejecting Professor Bell's notions...
...If a candidate wants to win an election for local office, he must advocate a program broad enough to appeal to a majority of voters, which is likely to include a range of racial minorities...
...Though union apologists sometimes stoutly deny it, the history of all unions is scarred by racial discrimination...
...As for technology, the major consequence for labor will be to make the work force and union membership somewhat more skilled...
...Albert Camus never bought them, and his thinking about workers seems now to have some chance for acceptance...
...Meany and his staff also supported Gore, Hart, Hartke, Kennedy, Metzenbaum, Stevenson, Williams, and other doves, though their opponents' positions on foreign policy often must have been more to the AFL– CIO's liking...
...Department of Commerce, 1970...
...During the recession-pocked Eisenhower years, it is a wonder that unions managed to get on as well as they did...
...Among the larger unions, the only ones to suffer permanent damage were those in declining industries...
...Building Service from 230,000 to 389,000...
...Most of the universities had a few black students, faculty, or administrators...
...In fact, many unions were then immobilized cent edition of this biennial publication of the U.S...
...Union leadership hasgrown old...
...We cannot, however, wholly discount the influence of simple antilabor and antiworkingclass bias...
...Rolland G. Paulston l Una imagen de la Argentina...
...Such a Congress might: • Pass tax reform that would bring about some redistribution of wealth—especially through the imposition of higher rates on the top income brackets and the elimination of such tax dodges as the depletion allowance...
...10...
...The expansion of public employment and unionization will probably also have the effect of making public ownership more acceptable to larger numbers of Americans, UNION MEMBERSHIP IN SOUTHERN STATES * The gross number of members is expressed in thousands and the percentages of nonagricultural work force is enclosed in parentheses...
...The effect will create greater insecurity among publicly employed professionals and accelerate union growth at the upper levels of civil service-which will make unionization of such workers socially even more acceptable than it is now...
...The same seems true for other industries...
...The growing need for schools, homes, hospitals, autos, appliances, and services caused the work force to grow to an unprecedented size...
...The Auto Workers' 1957 membership of 1.3 million sank to a low of 1 million just two years later, but bounced back to 1.4 million in 1968...
...But if history moves on its present course, the worker and his union will once again have a place in the sun...
...We think it will—but our hopes and goals (in contrast to our desires) are limited...
...LABOR'S DECADE — MAYBE percent representation...
...Until very recently it has been fashionable to write off the working class as having, at best, small significance in either the nation's present or future...
...Only five out of 380 policy making posts in these universities were held by blacks...
...Almost half of all employed males are employed in blue-collar jobs (craftsmen, operatives, service workers)-47.3 percent in 1968, to be precise...
...These locals are eligible to affiliate with state and county labor groups, in which their representatives find a forum to communicate grievances and political demands to the white community...
...A unionized worker is much more likely than a nonunionized one to be informed about the record of his congressman...
...All these factors were often overlooked or minimized by the numerous writers who kept predicting that unionism would wither away...
...10 Frank Tannenbaum, A Philosophy of Labor (New York: Knopf, 1951...
...Alberto Ciria Oligarquia, clase media y Educaci6n en la Argentina (1900-1930...
...Even John Lindsay had the support of a significant minority of New York's unions, and Gene McCarthy—idol of the New Democrats—was first elected to the House of Representatives and later to the Senate as a candidate of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor party...
...Membership has reached the saturation point except in some white-collar unions...
...They have access to grievance procedures...
...Moreover, the solid strength of unions has underwritten a kind of political and social freedom not previously enjoyed by workers...
...It is concerned with the whole man...
...They are covered by pension agreements, and enjoy lengthening vacations and holidays with pay...
...They had it in the thirties, during a period of struggle and unrest, when the unions as we today know them were pretty much shaped...
...Communication Workers from 259,000 to 357,000...
...Letter Carriers from 108,000 to 210,000...
...Extend the protection of the National Labor Relations Act and Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wages) to agricultural workers and others who now are not covered...
...Yet, almost half of all the Negro policy makers were found in these areas-137 out of 283.5 Industrial unions are very likely the most racially integrated organizations in the country— not necessarily out of inherent virtue, but because the CIO saw from the start that it had to include black workers if it was to organize along industrial rather than craft lines . 6 In the integrated union especially, the activist learns the politics of coalition, a basic part of the art of negotiation...
...The effect of the organization of large numbers of public workers is to increase the pressure on unions to campaign for a redistribution of wealth and income...
...IV N SUMMARY, we think the obituaries for workers and their unions, have been premature, based principally on superficial reading of available materials, and distorted inferences drawn from short-term trends...
...Teaching machines and TV will 7 The National Education Association, whose membership is probably five or six times that of theAFT, has a long tradition of participation in policymaking...
...BRENDAN SEXTON AND PATRICIA CAYO SEXTON and certainly will increase public interest and participation in the society...
...Changing membership and leadership, as well as a thrust into new unorganized areas, will give the unions a strong new momentum...
...But some reasonable inferences may be made...
...Instead, they often flatly deny any guilt at all...
...A good many have joined in programs such as those sponsored by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which has successfully prepared large numbers of young black workers for admission to apprenticeships in various trades...
...Increased demand began to compensate for the decline in jobs resulting from automation industry and partial prefabrication in construction...
...Pensions have risen and the age of retirement has declined, permitting older workers to make way for the young...
...They have finally caught on in some of the fastest growing sectors of the society and are likely to catch on in others...
...The AFL, after all, was a leading sponsor of the law excluding Oriental immigrants...
...In the sixties the percentage actually increased somewhat...
...Blacks are becoming urban industrial workers —and union members—in the North (and to a lesser extent in the South) at a phenomenal rate...
...A number of large unions have more than 20 percent black membership...
...Well, this demise of blue-collar has now been impending for at least 20 years, the obituaries have proliferated, and the patient remains pretty healthy...
...The workers' unions, naturally, were even worse, led by fat cats, bureaucrats, crooks, and sellouts...
...Moreover, children born during the baby boom of the forties and fifties became adults and consumers of cars, appliances, homes, and other products made by union members...
...the State, County and Municipal Workers went from 150,000 to 364,000...
...Unions in the seventies, for example, will more nearly resemble the Congress of Industrial Organizations of the thirties than the AFL of the sixties...
...In the South and elsewhere, much union growth occurred in strategic areas of the economy—especially in government employment...
...Roosevelt University was the sole institution that had a number of blacks at the top...
...the Teachers' Federation from 50,000 to 165,000...
...The Taft-Hartley law, the various state "right-to-work" laws and, a little later, LandrumGriffin, all created new problems for unions, especially in organizing...
...In the fifties and sixties, some long-term assumptions about union growth were drawn from short-term trends...
...Meanwhile, major changes were occurring in the racial, social, and cultural composition of the working class...
...The membership figures are all rounded...
...Labor will come to the forefront in the seventies because the economic issues, again urgent, will probably remain with us, especially if conservatives persist in fiddling away our resources when not pouring them into war machines...
...The McClellan hearings created general public antagonism to unions...
...We hope not for the millennium, but only for a kind of enlightened social and political equilibrium in which democratic discourse about necessary social change can continue, while the worst burdens are lifted from the backs of the socially and politically outcast...
...That is why the trade-union is a repudiation of the individualism of the French Revolution and of the liberalism of English utilitarian philosophers...
...One of these, the Laborers, has a membership that may be more than half black, and blacks are prominent in its top leadership...
...Furthermore, the black population is younger than the white, less schooled, and therefore more likely to enter the blue-collar work force...
...Such successes create new agendas for state, local, and federal governments, and LABOR'S DECADE - MAYBE a new dynamic in our political life...
...At least one, the Operating Engineers, administered a Job Corps center in a successful effort to increase the number of blacks employed in driving earth-moving equipment...
...It makes a difference...
...Senate with labor support are classified as "doves...
...The University of Illinois had one policy maker...
...Reduce the qualifying age and raise the amount of social security payments...
...s For reasons not known to us, union membership is almost always reported as a percentage ofthe "nonagricultural work force," whereas wechoose to measure membership against the totallabor force...
...Neither the work force nor the unions have declined...
...Union membership will pick up in the South, among women, among public employees, among the working poor and paraprofessionals, and perhaps also among whitecollar and professional workers...
...Most of us are sick of violence and guerrilla war, sick of war abroad and at home...
...An organized base for the southern populist currents that have never quite died will be created in many communities...
...Until recently, blacks were restricted in their efforts to enter most of the industrial skilled trades...
...Even the more conservative and lethargic unions transmit information and education for their members about the conduct of public officials...
...Though their representation is still inadequate, blacks have thus far won more influence in unions than in any other American social institution...
...In all appropriatecases, we have cited the latest months or yearsgiven in that publication...
...Jobs, income, opportunity, distribution of wealth and power, standard of living—these are basic, and these are the issues of greatest concern to labor...
...Joseph Hodara Planeaci6n y participaci6n social en America Latina .........Fernando Guillen Martinez La politica en Guatemala Joseph Thesing...
...Separate seniority lists, negotiated by unions, sometimes guaranteed that blacks would be laid off first and recalled last in periods of recession...
...In welfare and religious organizations, whose constituents were often largely black, 8 percent of policy making posts were held by blacks...
...To be sure, racism will not disappear in the South simply because workers are unionized...
...W W NILE THE CENSUS gives little information tion about ages of workers in specific occupations, we do know from pension information in the auto industry that hordes of young people are employed there...
...Adopt a relatively generous form of guaranteed income, and support programs designating the government as employer of last resort to provide work for the unemployed...
...LABOR'S DECADE - MAYBE by the Eisenhower policy of combating inflation by raising unemployment, a neat trick Nixon has tried to repeat...
...More open and flexible than many of his left-leaning critics, George Meany personally gave his support to liberals with whom he disagreed violently on Vietnam...
...Even many of the building trades—especially those in the so-called trowel trades—have never been cited for racial exclusion...
...If the reports showed percentages of the total work force, all the percentages almost certainly would have risen...
...To be sure, white-collar workers have multiplied even faster, but it is the agricultural workers who are disappearing (and being soaked up into a variety of jobs), not the blue-collar workers...
...8 Irving Louis Horowitz, a more moderate critic than Professor Bell, says he does not believe a resurgence of the militantmoralistic unionism of the left is likely in the foreseeable future...
...Even the best unions have sinned, and the worst have been persistently and callously exclusionist...
...Historically, union organizing efforts tend to be least successful in periods of rising unemployment...
...A lot of union leaders are corrupted by power...
...6 According to unofficial estimates, almost half the members of the 550,000-member Laborers' Union and the 50,000-member Longshoremen's Union areblack...
...Data controls and systems analysis will lead to the replacement of many professional and technical workers...
...In all three, the average is very close to four out of ten workers at or under the magical age of 30...
...Retail-Wholesale from 107,000 to 175,000...
...Some craft unions have flatly excluded blacks...
...But its very lack of ideas make it strong and enable it to concentrate upon immediate ends without wasting its energies in a futile pursuit of Utopia...
...3 Most unions are growing steadily...
...Even as a percentage of the work force, the number of blue-collar workers has remained amazingly constant, fluctuating from year to year only within a few percentage points...
...During the fifties and sixties, the average age of the population declined...
...jority, the thrust of black separatism is likely to be blunted, just as open white racism became politically untenable in locals where blacks form a significant minority...
...American labor, at least after 1880, was not in the main of the left in any classically socialist sense of the term...
...Influential people in both NEA and AFT favormerger of the two organizations...
...The Steelworkers Union, whose membership declined from 1.2 million in 1957 to 878,000 in 1963, climbed back to 1.1 million in 1968...
...2 Materials dealing with numbers of union members are quoted or abstracted from various editions of the Directory of National and International Labor Unions in the United States...
...Their critics—often themselves associated with racially exclusive institutions—have often treated unionists as though they alone were sinners...
...In Alabama, until recently, the only organized opposition to George Wallace came from the State Federation of Labor...
...The pomposity of labor leaders unbearable...
...and in Chrysler, 41 percent...
...The continuing inflation will add to the pressures...
...We know, for example, that black people have been moving North, that the black population of Southern states has declined...
...State 1964 1966 Alabama 158 (18.7) 178 (19.2) Arkansas 73 (17) 83 (17) Florida 214 (14) 234 (13.6) Georgia 166 (14) 188 (14.2) Kentucky 195 (27) 217 (27.1) Louisiana 160 (18.7) 176 (18.3) Mississippi 62 (13.5) 64 (12.3) North Carolina 100 (7.4) 104 (6.9) South Carolina 48 (7.4) 49 (6.7) Tennessee 201 (19.2) 225 (18.9) Texas 394 (14.1) 423 (13.7) Virginia 184 (15.8) 199 (15.5) 1968 193 (20.1) 97 (19.1) 279 (14.4) 239 (16.6) 235 (27.5) 187 (18.0) 76 (13.8) 124 (7.5) 66 (8.6) 246 (19.4) 474 (13.9) 230 (16.6) * The table shows total membership in each state for the years 1964, 1966, and 1968-the only yearsfor which such material is available...
...By the end of the decade it is likely that many auto workers will be retiring at or before age 50...
...We expect a turn in a progressive direction...
...President Kennedy opted for high employment levels, and made collective bargaining procedures a matter of accepted policy for government employees...
...It will continue to eliminate some unskilled jobs and increase the need for skilled workers—but not dramatically...
...During the seventies, there will be increased pressure—from young and old alike—to reduce the number of years spent at routine jobs and to bring the age of retirement down...
...But this too inevitably will change, and the union will pay far more attention to its young members...
...Critica: "Educacibn y Sociedad en la Argentina", de Juan Carlos Tedesco Aldo E. Solari Inventario de los estudios en ciencias sociales en America latina (Desarrollo Economico VI) Redaccib y Administracidn: Insfituto Latinoamericano de Relaciones Internacionales 23, rue de la Pepinlere, PARIS-8e Suscripcidn anual: 5 d6lares o 25 francos...
...In all, 45 AFL-CIO unions have black membership that is proportionally larger than the percentage of blacks in the total population (about 11 percent...
...The largest contingent, the report added, is from Michigan, where the "farsighted policies of the United Auto Workers have contributed measurably to black successes...
...In these 12 states, unions added 1 million members between 1960 and 1968 and rose to a total estimated membership of about 2.7 million in 1970...
...Labor is no longer pushing up the kind of extraordinary leaders that it did in the thirties and who are emerging from the blacks today...
...Successful strikes of southern public and hospital workers have made some local unions the strongest organizations blacks have in southern communities...
...The Federation of Teachers, for example, will certainly intervene increasingly in education policy-probably with mixed results...
...Increase assistance to Appalachia and other areas where poverty is endemic...
...I know that if they are separated (workers and intellectuals) they BRENDAN SEXTON AND PATRICIA CAYO SEXTON will allow themselves to be overwhelmed gradually by the forces of tyranny and barbarousness, but that united, on the other hand, they will govern the world...
...Will it all make a difference...
...Trade-unionism is a social and ethical system, not merely an economic one...
...Many whites still come North from the rural South and border states, but they are more likely than blacks to stop off at Memphis, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and other southern cities...
...APORTES Revista trimestral de ciencias sociales publicada por el ILARI Director: Luis Mercier Vega NUMERO 21 La dependencia de la dependencia...
...He thereby stimulated the trend already begun at state, city, and county levels—in areas where organized labor's political muscle could be effectively applied —to guarantee public employees the right to organize and bargain collectively...
...Juan Carlos Tedesco Modelo analitico del proceso de insercibn migratoria Lelio Marmora...
...That freedom is reflected in the kinds of candidates elected to public office in places where unions are strong...
...They have some insurance against sickness, death, unemployment...
...In almost all cases, unionized whites in these communities have given at least tacit support to the strikes of black workers...
...Most Americans want to get out of the trenches...
...Increasingly, blacks are taking the struggle to other unions...
...What will labor do with the seventies...
...As unions learn how to organize these new types—and there is evidence that they are learning—they may be able to go beyond the one-quarter mark, which for the last two decades seems to have been, more or less, their assigned share of the labor force...
...As with age, information about the racial composition of the work force is sparse...
...The moreorless liberal interpretation and enforcement of the Labor Relations Act that had marked the Roosevelt and Truman eras began to be reversed as Eisenhower appointees to the NLRB and the federal courts imposed greater restrictions on union organizing efforts...
...Increase the number of housing units being constructed...
...A few of the others, such as the IBEW (Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), have organized industrial workers as well as building tradesmen and include thousands of black workers in their ranks...
...At the same time, highly publicized and often successful strikes of professionals— teachers, airline pilots, TV commentators— gave the idea of unionization unprecedented public sanction...
...Unions were on the defensive, and this made organizing more difficult...
...Increase the amounts of money being spent for education at all levels...
...As they seek support for their goals, the government workers politicize other unions...
...Harvard Professor Daniel Bell speaks for many when he says (as quoted in the New York Times) : ' The degree of corruption in labor has become incredible...
...As time goes by, the "minority" in local unions will increasingly be white...
...The rubber workers dropped from 178,000 to 158,000 in the two years 1957-59, but climbed up to 203,000 by 1968...
...Cliches about the decline of unions were by then so widely accepted that new trends becoming apparent in the middle sixties were almost ignored...
...These standards will surely spread to other industries, too...
...Losses were concentrated in sick or dying industries and where employment generally declined sharply —mining, railroads, textiles, shoe manufacturing, furniture, marine, transportation, etc...
...The number of young people in the labor force, of course, far outnumbers those in schools and colleges...
...Adopt advanced standards for water and air pollution...
...They are protected against arbitrary discipline and discharge...
...He is more likely to register and vote, simply because his union persistently urges him to do so...
...The "nonagricultural work force" measurement reflects ashift away from agrarian jobs rather than a decline of unionism and is therefore less useful for these purposes...
...Those "farsighted policies" are in no small measure attributable to the continuing agitation of courageous and aggressive blacks who found in the UAW a forum where they could struggle for their cause...
...If it occurs theresult will be a union about the size of the Teamsters...
...During the fifties, the McCarthy years, unions again came under assault...
...The late fifties were an uncertain and difficult period for unions, especially industrial unions...
...In those geographic and economic areas jobs have risen fastest, and so has union membership...
...By the logic of their position, however, unionized workers are driven to cooperate, at least for limited goals, across racial lines...
...There are now more bluecollar workers than at any time in history, and more Americans belong to unions than ever before...
...The big job of unions, in this respect, is keeping up with the phenomenal growth in the work force over •the past several decades, from about 59 million in 1950 to about 82 million in 1968...
...We are not brash enough to include in this list "a more rapid end to the Vietnam war"— but with few exceptions candidates who won for the U.S...
...become commonplace...
...2 1 All statistical citations dealing with the work force are taken from the Handbook of Basic Economic Statistics, Bureau of the Census, U.S...
...A study of black powerlessness, conducted for the Urban League of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, found that unions had a larger percentage (13 percent) of black "policy-makers" than any other private institution...
...Unions in the North and also, though to a lesser extent, in the South will be a natural center—a new, more realistic and powerful kind—of black power in the seventies...
...More specifically, the male blue-collar work force has increased as a percentage of the total male work force while the corresponding percentage of females has decreased (the proportion of female "service workers" is growing...
...In Ford, for example, 32 percent of all workers are age 30 or under...
...Southern unions, playing a healing and ameliorative role in race relations, should begin to push the Democratic party to the Left, and diminish the strength of the northern conservative and southern coalition that has paralyzed liberal reform for so long...
...In Mississippi, facing terror and intimidation, the state labor organization has nonetheless opposed the Klan and White Citizens' Councils...
...DURING THE SIXTIES union membership also grew—from 17 to 19 million and held nearly constant as a proportion of the work force...
...tions that flow from the worker's relation to his job seemed to involve no broad program...
...Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, appeared in late 1970 and reported union membership for 1968...
...The confusion of European intellectuals [Camus said] springs from the double hoax, bourgeois and pseudo-revolutionary, and separating them from their sole source of authenticity, the work and suffering of all, cutting them off from their sole natural allies, the workers...
...Labor can be expected to achieve renewed strength in the seventies because many Americans do want change in our society, and labor is driven to use its power to win social change...
...Union growth in the South has been a rather well-guarded secret...
...All this may seem trivial to those concerned only with revolutionary abstractions—but it is a great deal to the millions of workers who are directly affected...
...Others have sponsored their own training programs for both journeymen and apprentices...
...Some years ago, Frank Tannenbaum came close to expressing our assessment of unions, when he wrote in A Philosophy of Labor: This profound challenge to our time has gone largely unnoticed because the tradeunion's preoccupation with the detailed fric 8 Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death (New York: Knopf, 1961...
...IN THE SOUTH, where industry is growing more rapidly than elsewhere, union growth has been dramatic, if rather obscured by the widely publicized and recurrent failures in past decades to "Organize Dixie...
...4 These young workers are beginning to be represented in something close to their numbers in the secondary leadership of the UAW, although nobody on the chief policy-making body— the International Executive Board—is under 45...
...To this day, they are underrepresented in such occupations as tool and die maker, machinist, patternmaker, machine repair, steel-mill roller, etc...
...Local and state governments are being pushed to bankruptcy by the need to expand old and provide new services, and by public workers' demands for a greater share of the nation's wealth...
...At precisely the time when declining membership was reducing dues and income, the new legal complexities drained their finances and energy...
...Until just a few years ago, many of its affiliates still organized and sanctioned jim-crow locals in the South...
...Their impact in those places will be felt, we believe, just as it has been in northern towns where industrial unions have united workers of all trades and races under one banner...
...BRENDAN SEXTON AND PATRICIA CAYO SEXTON Among the 46 unions whose membership exceeds 100,000, only eight, as it happens, are building trades unions...
...Union Prospects for the Seventies IF WE READ our stars right, the seventies ought to see, not the dawning of the age of Aquarius, but a new era for the working man...
...Of course, some catastrophe or technological breakthrough may make the seventies nobody's decade...
...Improve consumer protection and the enforcement powers of government regulatory agencies...
...These include: State, County and Municipal workers (360,000total members), Meatcutters-Packinghouse Workers (500,000), Letter Carriers (210,000), PostalClerks (166,000), International Ladies Garment Workers (455,000), Building Service (398,000), Laundry Workers (25,000), the American Federation of Teachers (165,000), and possibly Steel (1.1million) and Auto Workers (1.4 million...
...At the same time that masses of young people were entering the labor force and unions, the older workers were coming out the other end...
...Since 1964, as illustrated in the following table, unions have, with some fluctuations, grown in almost every southern state in both absolute and relative terms...
...NEA members arenot included in our count of union membersthough it certainly would not be unreasonable toadd their numbers to total union membership...
...Adopt an advanced form of national health insurance...
...In terms of the individual, the union returns to the worker his "society...
...In 1972, auto workers with 30 years of service will be eligible for retirement at age 56...
...In a post1970 election comment on the number of blacks holding public office in the United States, the New Republic said that there were 1,600 prior to the 1970 election and an increased number thereafter...
...1970)," New Politics, Summer 1970...
...In the mid-fifties the percentage had been slightly higher...
...From 1960 through 1968 union membership as a percentage ofthe nonagricultural work force sank from 31.4 to27.9—but measured against the total labor forcethe percentages were 23.6 against 23.0...
...So much attention, for example, has been given to conservatism and "racism" in some building trades unions that, in the public mind, they have come to symbolize unionism generally...
...In many industries where southern unions are growing, blacks form a significant part of the work force...
...Prejudice and discrimination survive—even sometimes flourish—in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other industrial centers, but unions there nonetheless manage to help elect candidates, including many blacks, who appeal to both black and white workers...
...Moreover, the growth has been most rapid in populations and places unfamiliar to unions: clerical, professional, service, women, the South...
...Current political roles will then be reversed, with contending groups of blacks seeking white support, just as contending whites now solicit black votes...
...The fastest growing unions have been the American Federation of Government Employees, State, County and Municipal Workers, and the American Federation of Teachers...
...The universities had a negligible one 4 The percentages were computed from employment reports submitted by Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler to UAW pension committees...
...They create new-and often influential-lobbies for the expansion of public operations...
...The labor movement has stagnated...
...R R ADICALS HAVE A LONG HISTORY Of disappointment with American unions, especially the CIO unions from which they expected far more radicalism than they got...
...The 28.2 million blue-collar workers employed at the close of 1969 is the largest number ever so classified.' In addition, 9.5 million service workers can probably also be counted as blue-collar—a substantial increase...
...Many of its state andlocal affiliates call strikes, and most now bargaincollectively for their members...
...In 1957-68, for example, the American Federa BRENDAN SEXTON AND PATRICIA CAYO SEXTON tion of Government Employees grew from 64,000 to 294,000...
...Cambios en la Educacibn cubana...
...High interest rates, unemployment, and the periodic recessions of that era reduced the demand for homes, autos, appliances, and all the materials going into them—steel, aluminum, rubber, copper, electrical components...
...Many will have a membership that will be much blacker, younger, better educated, and probably more militant, and these members will vote in leaders who more nearly resemble them...
...A majority of Alabama's organized workers, it is true, did support George Wallace, but studies have shown the support they gave was smaller in percentage than among the unorganized...
...These changes are making the working class both blacker and younger...
...In tinkering with the little things— hours, wages, shop conditions, and security in the job—the trade-union is, however, rebuilding our industrial society upon a different basis from that envisioned by the philosophers, economists, and social revolutionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries...
...The elected political offices and the elected trade union offices [the study found] account for only 11 percent of all policy making positions in Cook County...
...Such growth will have great social and political significance not only in the South, but in the entire nation...
...The most reIn 1968 union members were 23 percent of the labor force, including part-time as well as full-time workers...
...The death of jim-crow locals, for example, will throw blacks and whites together in the same unions, where they will find themselves working toward the same goals...
...Actually, if we were to reach the kind of LABOR'S DECAD1 — MAYBV equilibrium that would be achieved if all the candidates supported by labor in 1970 had been elected to the Congress, we would see significant social change...
...Then the Pandora's box of "reasonable profits" will open and out will pop questions of income and wealth distribution...
...Losses in some unions were assumed to follow from inroads made by automation and the genetic inability of unions to organize white-collar workers...
...It became fashionable for conservative congressional candidates to "run against" Walter Reuther (who never entered a political race...
...A left orientation has always been modest, if not peripheral, and thus has not suffered such a dramatic decline as is often made out 9 We too see no leftward movement in any "classical socialist sense," but we do see a labor movement supplied with fresh momentum by the newly organized, the blacks, the young, the public workers, and Southerners...
...It gives him a fellowship, a part in the drama that he can understand, and life takes on meaning once again because he shares a value system common to others...
...But unions have been no worse than most other American institutions in this regard, and have been better than many...
...In Texas even now the organized labor movement is at the heart of the liberal political coalition that wins an occasional statewide victory (Yarborough to the U.S...
...They are generally much more successful than other unions in shaping the policies of the organizations for which they work...
...Efforts to control wages, as a pretext for limiting price increases, are sure to be made...
...Senate) and sends a good handful of liberal candidates to Congress and to the state legislature...
...In all, there were 37.7 million workers in 1969, compared to 29.8 million in 1950...
Vol. 18 • August 1971 • No. 4
