THE FINISHED WORLD OF GEORGE MEANY

...Randolph was working with those outside labor to put pressure on the unions, and this was what set Meany off...

...he is looked to for settling on-the-job problems with the employer...

...Dan Tobin of the Teamsters and William Hutcheson of the Carpenters decided it was time for a change and tapped Meany as Morrison's successor...

...That is, given the antagonism between CIO and AFL, and the reinforcing element of antiCommunism, it is not difficult to see how Meany could allow his subordinates to drift into working with the CIA...

...One of the virtues of the Civil Rights Act was that it would institutionalize the forces represented by the March...

...The day following the 1972 election, George Meany said that the voters "have shown that they want peace in Vietnam, but not surrender and not dishonor...

...But the most severe problems of the AFL were domestic and internal...

...Three years after his father's death, Meany was elected to the local's executive board, and thereafter his history was a series of upward steps: business agent, then secretary of the New York Building Trades Council, member of the executive board of the New York State Federation of Labor, president of the State Federation, secretary-treasurer of the AFL, and finally, president of the AFL—CIO...

...May 1956, p. 531...

...It does not disdain or sacrifice immediate needs, interests, and possible gains for transcendent goals...

...They (and Meany) regaled Goulden with anecdotes of his successful enforcement of the contract and his triumphs in jurisdictional battles...

...As an official of the State Federation, Meany's "forte was the give-and-take of face-to-face negotiations, the business agent technique of persuasion and blunt talk...

...If present-day evidence is a reliable guide, this suggests that the Plumbers' passivity was an important element in Meany's political success in the union...

...Meany on the elections is like seeing a cycle of the seasons...

...After the war one of the major objectives of AFL policy was "to insure AFL recognition as the only spokesman for American workers in international labor organizations...

...His early experience of politics in the union and outside it suggests some resemblance to that of the old-style machine politician...

...But the civil rights movement posed a somewhat different problem...

...The March on Washington represented forces that were not easily subject to control, but, at the same time, forces with which one had to come to terms...

...On the WLB he was involved in protecting labor interests in the face of wage-and-price controls, attempts to curb the right to strike and further organize—all issues that allowed THE FINISHED WORLD OF GEORGE MEANY maximum play for the talents of a former business agent...

...Dealing with a government bureau is very much like dealing with an employer: negotiations are the order of the day, and so there is a measure of control...

...The war gave him some opportunity, through service on the War Labor Board, to enter the political arena...

...While anticorruption measures might affect specific leaders but not necessarily the structure of political power, antidiscrimination measures, which would permit the entrance of a new segment of the working class, could be more menacing to the way power was organized...

...This world is always threatened, on the one hand, by the rise of bureaucratic modes of organization with its universalistic norms and, on the other, by enthusiasms that subordinate organization, relationships, and proximate interests to the overriding demands of some transcendent goal...

...Hence he moved deftly to cut the ground from under Randolph in a way that satisfied Randolph's demands, but also made Randolph the loser in terms of AFL--CIO politics...

...I suspect that Goulden's lack of a labor background may have been a major attraction for Meany...

...The process of negotiation means that neither party has sole control of the THE FINISHED WORLD OF GEORGE MEANY 181 resolution of the conflict...

...Shortly after Meany became president of the AFL, state investigatory bodies began to publicize corruption in the International Longshoremen's Association...

...The basis for Meany's anger became even clearer after Randolph formed the Negro MURRAY HAUSKNECHT American Labor Council in 1960 and continued to attack racism in the unions...

...To be a successful business agent requires the skills of a successful politician...

...Like all politicians they build effective machines...

...Meany's view of politics is obviously influenced by his experience of the labor movement...

...In addition to clauses about wages and hours, the contract contains regulative clauses specifying how the work is to be done and the restrictive or "featherbedding" clauses...

...The members of his local were not a particularly militant lot: the Plumbers, a contemporary reports, "wanted no fights or troubles...

...Despite all this, it is a mistake to see Meany as a hard-bitten reactionary on racial matters...

...But Randolph was not to be deterred, and in 1961 he proposed to the council of the AFL—CIO "a blockbuster which Meany well knew could blow the AFL—CIO into public turmoil over the race issue...

...So great was his frustration, he was about to return to New York when the war broke out...

...And for men on the factory floor or construction site none of this is small or unimportant...

...Successfully resisting all attempts to invade his private life, he has apparently never been tempted to use public-relations techniques for the creation of a "public image...

...The one area in which Meany was able to operatewith almost no restraint was in - ternational affairs...

...For this view ignores the simple fact that the strong support of organized labor was probably responsible for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with its strong antidiscrimination-in-employment clause...

...A study of labor relations in the Chicago construction industry during the first three decades of the century notes that "once in office, business agents tend to remain there...

...Consequently, Green was able to block Meany from taking an active organizational role, particularly as a lobbyist, the activity for which he had acquired a strong taste in New York...

...According to Meany's contemporaries he was an effective business agent...

...During the Depression, Meany learned new skills...

...When this is lacking, the position of the business agent is consider ably weaker...

...Meany then, according to Goulden, moved to put into effect many of the measures Randolph advocated...

...In effect, Meany became labor's chief lobbyist for New Deal legislation on the state level...

...When Meany won his first union office in 1919, he entered a relatively stable world...

...In the construction industry, where workers are scattered in small work units, the business agent performs the functions of the industrial plant's shop steward...

...This difference becomes clear by recalling that the Plumbers, who issued Meany's union card, signed a master agreement establishing a closed shop in New York in 1886...

...Royal E. Montgomery, Industrial Relations in the Chicago Building Trades (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927), p. 212...

...Enforcement of the contract is in the hands of the business agent, an elected official often the only paid officer of a local...

...The meaning of a union and the significance of one's place in the labor movement must be very different for a Reuther and a Meany...

...It was a memorandum attacking the organization for "tokenism in civil rights" and calling for a meeting between Meany and black leaders to find ways of working together in such fields as voter registration...

...And we collected money from the business agents, ten dollars here, fifteen dollars there...

...1 178 MURRAY HAUSKNECHT internal politics, although Goulden points to the importance of the experience as a business agent...

...Later, there were scandals in the Teamsters involving Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa...

...But unlike the latter, the business agent is the main channel of employment, since the agreement calls for contractors to secure their workers through him...

...or the technique of the old pol who lives in a world of personal relationships based on an exchange of favors...

...Meany's—as many an occupational career—points to the influence of a parental model...

...1 Although still highly protective of his private life, he encouraged others to talk to Goulden and gave him access to AFL-CIO records...

...Given his personal background as an Irish Catholic skilled construction worker, there is a certain inevitability to the rigid, oversimplistic anti-Communism now characteristic of AFL policy...

...So predictable, in fact, that we often neglect to ask why they work as they do and how they came to be that way...

...the AFL wanted to deny the rival CIO any recognition as a coequal federation...

...Meany, though, was reluctant: "'I'm no damn fool to run against a fellow who's held the job for forty-four years, and to run just because he happens to be seventy-nine years of age.' `Well,' Tobin said, `He'll get out, we'll give him a pension.' " Such sentiments, which did credit to everyone concerned as men and politicians, are inconceivable where bureaucratic rules are dominant or where ideological fervor takes over...

...At the convention they had the initiative, and consequently labor couldn't exercise its customary degree of control...

...The Federations's president, William Green, was a weak man, and its 79yearold secretary-treasurer, Frank Morrison, had held the job since 1896...

...No doubt even Meany now recognizes that we must get out of Vietnam...

...El 182 MURRAY HAUSKNECHT...

...it enhances his power vis-a-vis potential internal rivals...

...in dealing with employers business agents depend to a considerable extent upon "spontaneous militancy" from their members...

...How career dovetails with organizational experi ence is suggested by one of the few anecdotes about the private Meany...

...Meany "thoroughly disagreed with the charges in the report, but he was unwilling to have Randolph spread it before an AFL— CIO convention...

...Green was originally scheduled to be dumped along with Morrison, but Tobin and Hutcheson were unable to muster enough support for that part of the program...

...The first relationships were established with intelligence agencies during World War II, and the war justified the cooperative ties...

...Herbert H. Lehman, Roosevelt's successor as governor, had run with the formal endorsement of the State Federation...

...Many seemingly spontaneous strikes are instigated by the business agent or have his benevolent approval...

...Institutions are predictable and sometimes very much like natural phenomena...

...The net result of Meany's "deftness" was that the executive council voted to censure Randolph...

...In large measure, Meany was simply concerned with how to fend off these external forces rather than with the structural conditions that made corruption endemic in certain unions...

...But bureaus and bureaucrats by their very nature are respectful of the political clout of large organizations...

...Labor working closely with the Democratic party on a mutually determined program is now a political commonplace, but in that era it was an innovation...

...But something more may have been involved, and here the war issue becomes relevant...

...Predictably, though, "there was little positive accomplishment...

...From this perspective, McGovern's desire for unilateral withdrawal was the very negation of politics...

...Americana: the practical politician at work counting his votes, getting his people to the polls, squeezing his backers for the extra buck...

...From Meany's perspective the McGovern forces would bear considerable resemblance, in more ways than one, to the civil rights forces...

...Militancy is acceptable as long as it can be channeled in a way that does not endanger the organization or one's power within it...

...IN THE CONSTRUCTION TRADES each local has a master agreement with an association of employers...

...Meany is an early example of a career in labor...

...There is much to be said for this perspec tive...

...Meany "accused Randolph and the NALC of 'harassing our affiliates' with public statements...

...There's no question about it...

...An officer of the union had to protect that claim, and the "enemy" could be either employers or other workers challenging jurisdictional rights...

...Meany's world was a finished world, and his job was to protect it from those who would destroy it...

...The next thing we done, we started to figure out how we were going to get those delegates to Buffalo...

...In New York, at least, Meany was an important figure in forging this historic new relationship between labor and the parties...

...Meany has never been a journalist's dream...

...If a business agent cannot control his members, employers will ignore him and bargain individually with their men...

...A man who would simply leave Vietnam without negotiations was a man who cannot be trusted, because negotiations are the mutual recognition of the legitimacy of the parties' interests and claims...

...To be sure, Meany denies even knowing of the existence of the CIA before 1955, but this degree of innocence is not credited by Goulden...

...that is, it would put the enforcement of civil rights into the hands of government bureaus...

...However, McGovern's proposal for unilateral withdrawal was deeply antipathetic—ideological is sues aside—to someone raised on the oldstyle politics, someone whose entire professional and political life has been geared to the striking of bargains...

...But, for some reason that still remains a mystery to Joseph C. Goulden, Meany decided to talk to him at great length about his career and the organization he heads...

...The tragedy of Meany and, to an extent, of American labor as a whole is a failure to realize that the world is never finished and needs always to be remade...

...Only in Chicago, perhaps, are they effective, but in another city a construction teamsters' business agent "advertises his activities by insistently honking his horn at all construction trucks he passes...

...Yet he was the complete politician: in 1934 he ran for the presidency of the State Federation, and his base of support was in the New York City trade unions: So the first campaign...

...Thus, when Randolph objected in 1956 to the admission of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers to the AFLCIO on the grounds that blacks were excluded from membership, Meany accused him of raising a "high moral flag" and expressed confidence "that he could persuade the firemen to drop their color bar once they were in the AFL—CIO...

...The AFL record on racial discrimination was never a good one, and the only voice in defense of the black minority was that of A. Philip Randolph...

...cit., p. 533...

...He did not want the AFL—CIO `to be identified with a public demonstration initiated by others and over which the AFL—CIO has no control.' " The March can be likened to "a really unauthorized wildcat strike"—a form of militancy over which a business agent "has no control" and which undercuts his capacity to dominate a situation...

...When he was offered the job of secretary—treasurer his wife, reluctant to leave New York, was unenthusiastic: I finally said, "Well, you know this is a promotion...

...Unfortunately those who are outside that world, those who are black or Vietnamese, remain unrecognized...

...Career means order and continuity...

...So we run a Saturday afternoon party in Throgs Neck...

...For the critical element is not the strike experience but participation in creating an organization at a given time in history...

...It wasn't a question of salary, but of promotion...

...Meany did not like the idea...

...ning the picket lines...

...This dependency is not unwelcome to the business agent...

...Thus, when Dave Beck was expelled from the executive council of the AFL, Meany explained to his fellow members, "The big question is what we must do at this point from the standpoint of public relations...

...By 1939 the AFL was not doing well in competition with the CIO...

...But the dirty alliances with conservative and reactionary forces in South America and the equally disgraceful relationship with the CIA were not, perhaps, inevitable...

...he also may be the only union official a member sees with any regularity...

...Three years later, the Firemen still hadn't done so, and when Randolph attacked them at an AFL convention, Meany responded by saying, "Who the hell appointed you the guardian of all Negroes in America...

...THIS LOGIC may also apply to Meany's desertion of the Democratic party in the last election...

...politically, it was ineffective...

...Strauss, op...

...Since Goulden is neither a historian nor a labor journalist, the fat book he has produced comes very close to being an authorized Life and Organizational Times of George Meany...

...It was sharply different from the world of the men who organized the Steelworkers and the Automobile Workers in the 1930s, and it makes Meany a different man with a different experience...

...Thus for the rank-and-file member the business agent is "the union": he is instrumental in getting a member a job...

...Just as business agents use relationships with employers to fight off challenges to their political positions in the unions, so Meany may have been tempted by the presence of the CIA...

...Although the first threat had become a real one by the time Meany entered the national arena, the way he moved from New York to Washington was characteristic of old-time politics...

...was to get the locals to pay their dues [making them eligible to send delegates to the convention...

...However . . . really unauthorized wildcat strikes can be very embarrassing...

...The issue of corruption and its use as a weapon by unfriendly outsiders is not a new problem: after all, it was this kind of issue that helped keep the old-style municipal machines in constant trouble...

...Sometimes, indeed, the established relationship between an employer and the business agent can be used by the latter to reward his friends and punish his enemies...

...This is my life, you know .. .. The more .. I thought about it, the more I felt it was something I just couldn't say no to...

...Although the situation in the ILA and the Teamsters cannot have been completely unknown to Meany, he took action only when corruption became the 180 basis for attacks by outside forces on the Federation as a whole...

...his father had been an officer of the Plumbers' local in New York...

...Ultimately one must pay some attention to them, but only if they can be fitted into the world as it already exists...

...Both he and Meany would like us to believe that he abstained from politics: "Meany decided early on to avoid intraunion politics whenever possible...

...If the latter image suggests Walter Reuther and other early CIO leaders, then, perhaps, the difference may be something more fundamental...

...The second biggest job in the labor movement...

...2 Yet, if members lack militancy and are fearful of their employers, they become more dependent upon the business agent to protect their interests...

...Perhaps, paradoxically, a resolution of the contradiction can be found in Meany's refusal to participate in the March on Washington, either personally or as the official representative of American labor...

...He was a lonely voice, because any attempt to eliminate discrimination in the AFL could entail political conflicts within the affiliates that might threaten local structures of power...

...The conventional picture of Meany is that of a union leader who has never led a strike— a plodding, bureaucratic fat cat as compared to a flamboyant, charismatic figure man 1 Joseph C. Goulden, Meany: The Unchallenged Strong Man of American Labor (New York: Atheneum, 1972...

...When he became a union member, the Plumbers had staked out a claim for some control over their working lives, and this claim had been recognized as legitimate for a long time...

...It recognizes that what little control workers have gained over their lives can easily be lost...

...The CIA connection is reminiscent of something in the old-style political world from which Meany emerged...

...In Meany's case a good deal of the continuity is accounted for by the influence of his first full-time position as business agent...

...Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence about 2 George Strauss, "Control by the Membership in Building Trades Unions," American Journal of Sociology...