NEW TRENDS IN THE UNIONS
Widick, B. J.
The emergence of two distinct and conflicting tendencies within the trade unions—roughly, a Republican and a Democratic wing—has become more visible in 1973, although signs of this could...
...Dramatic evidence of this split is the open warfare between the predatory Teamsters Union and Cesar Chavez's Farm Workers Union, with the AFL-CIO seeking to prevent Frank Fitzsimmons, the Teamsters' president and President Nixon's closest labor ally, from wiping out the Farm Workers' organization...
...Under the political and economic pressures, unions are making new alliances to strengthen their positions...
...The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report states, "Increasing by 542,000 since 1968, membership in 208 labor unions and public and professional employee associations totaled 22.6 million by 1970...
...They include the antagonism of the Nixon and Reagan administrations, the hostility of the Farm Bureau and other growers organizations, and the unlimited muscle and money of the Teamsters, with their White House and Labor Department connections...
...The emergence of two distinct and conflicting tendencies within the trade unions—roughly, a Republican and a Democratic wing—has become more visible in 1973, although signs of this could already be seen during the 1972 presidential campaign...
...In a series of regional conferences on international affairs, the AFL-CIO leadership has admitted that its international influence is at a very low point...
...Another significant advance is the growth of white-collar unionism, once a rarity on the American scene, but now becoming a permanent feature of our labor-relations system...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS...
...Revelations that Charles W. Colson, former special counsel for President Nixon and now the Teamsters' chief lawyer, had helped arrange the blasts at Meany, after the November 1971 confrontation between the President and Meany at the AFL-CIO convention, suggest one of the techniques the Nixon camp used against Meany...
...Meany and other union leaders...
...Nevertheless, Chavez faces overwhelming odds in the summer of 1973...
...In Canada, the anti-AFL-CIO feeling is very strong, going back to Meany's prowar stand and because of some American union leaders' insensitivity to the feelings of their Canadian counterparts...
...Such insulting behavior has not endeared Meany to European unionists...
...Meany's fulminations indicated how little influence he had over the Building Trades in a political contest with the White House...
...Next was the atrocious attempt of the Nixon administration to proclaim its economic record as a success for the workingman, an argument which Meany denounced as the technique of the Big Lie...
...Cold warriors have few friends anywhere these days...
...Nearly 500,000 of that gain was attributable to advances in union membership...
...Meany took special pains to state his respect for the President of the United States...
...Over 3.5 million white-collar workers are now enlisted in unions...
...Nevertheless, the Building Trades stood by Brennan...
...In a brief six months, Meany has flip-flopped from "neutrality for Nixon" to a postelection honeymoon period, and now a hostile break— hardly a manifestation of political stability...
...Meanwhile confidence in the national AFL-CIO leadership of George Meany was weakening, and maneuvers for his succesor continued, with I. W. Abel of the Steelworkers, and Lane Kirkland, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, as leading contenders...
...There were over 153,000 signed contracts between labor and management last year, most of them for twoor three-year periods of time, with over 95 perCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS cent of them negotiated peacefully, and most of them containing union-shop and check-off provisions to provide union security...
...In April Meany sat in the audience of the national Building Trades conference while President Nixon defended Brennan's actions in breaking a preappointment commitment that he would support the AFL–CIO proposal for a new minimum-wage law...
...In place of homogeneity and solidarity we now have ferment, coalitions, mergers, rivalries, and political antagonisms...
...Unions that for years had denounced escalator "cost-ofliving" clauses, have now included this form of protection in new contracts—the UAW has had it for over 20 years...
...Quite the contrary...
...A refreshing example is the rebirth of the United Mine Workers as a symbol of decent unionism, owing to the victory of the Miners for Democracy...
...All this suggests, among other things, that the current organizations bear little resemblance to the lean and hungry unions of the early CIO days, or for that matter of the AFL in the 1930s...
...The embarrassing example is the growth of the Teamsters to over 1.8 millions members, no matter how tarnished its image...
...The AFL-CIO still remains outside of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions which—because of the wealth of the German metal workers federation—can no longer be influenced by American dollar contributions in the way it was during the early postwar period...
...In 1973, the only certainty under Phase III guidelines of 5.5 percent was that the Teamsters, negotiating for over 400,000 truck drivers in a nationwide pattern, would do better than other unions...
...While the smallest signs of international solidarity are given wide publicity owing to the talents of Charles Levinson, secretary general of the chemical workers federation, and Dan Benedict, secretary of the metal workers federation, the fact is that unions in each country or bloc are looking out for their own interests first...
...Joseph Bierne, president of the Communications Workers, has been negotiating with the large postal union, seeking organizational unity...
...Local unions do have the right to strike on local issues, and there will be wage increases, but neither side can afford a national strike...
...Not even Watergate has budged the Teamsters and Secretary of Labor Peter J. Brennan, with his Building Trades base, from the Nixon Republican camp...
...Later Meany took the floor and blasted Brennan for supporting the Nixon proposals which would exclude teen-age categories from minimum-wage protection...
...AS WAS EXPECTED, the strong unions did better than the weak in Phase I and II of the Nixon economic game plan...
...The AFL-CIO may not be disliked as much as ITT in South America, but there are no indications it could win a popularity contest either...
...Finally came the brazen raid on the Farm Workers Union, with the Team" , claiming to have organized 50,000 workers, ,,gned up in what Meany called "sweetheart agreements," including a provision that allowed for the reintroduction of the notorious "labor contractor" methods of hiring...
...In these circumstances, the phrase, "Organized Labor" has become somewhat less than useful as a way of understanding recent trends in the unions...
...Eighteen unions are engaged in coalition bargaining against General Electric...
...To 282 counter Japanese steel imports, the Steelworkers and the industry decided to try an experiment— unresolved issues in the next negotiations will go to binding arbitration, rather than the test of a picket line...
...Such unions as the UAW are devoting extraordinary attention to keeping their Canadian workers part of the team, but the wave of nationalism sweeping that country makes this difficult...
...However, the break between Dave Selden, the AFT president, and Al Shanker, with the prospect of a factional struggle within the AFT, appears to have slowed down the AFT-NEA unity campaign...
...The Teachers (AFT) kept trying to expand the successful formation of one teachers organization in New York State, the Congress of Teachers, into a national structure...
...Although the .Vatergate affair was well known to knowledgeable Washingtonians who read the daily press, last February the New York Times described the Meany–Nixon relationship this way: When he [President Nixon] came to the Americana Hotel to speak to the Executive Council of the AFL–CIO last Monday, the President received a cordial welcome from Mr...
...To be sure, from an institutional point of view, unionism in America has a formidable structure...
...In the sphere of world labor, the AFL-CIO was almost completely isolated and with less influence than at any recent period...
...But given the rate of inflation, April figures from the BLS indicated a decline in real wages for industrial workers by $2 a week...
...The AFL-CIO Council voted to raise $1.6 million to aid Chavez, who may also expect continued support from the independent UAW...
...Another BLS survey indicates that net assets of American trade unions were over $2 billion in 1970, and annual income was over $3 billion, $2 billion from dues and the rest from investments and other sources...
...Meany called the Feathers proposals an attempt to establish a MoscowLondon Axis...
...The Teamsters Union, according to a pro-Hoffa newspaper, The Manchester Union Leader, was deeply implicated in secret funding of the Nixon 1972 campaign...
...The Building Trades did the best of all in 1971 and 1972...
...The latest faux pas of Meany was his denunciation of the British trade union movement for seeking to establish better relations with unions in the COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Common Market countries, in an effort to make the voice of British unionism more powerful as England enters the EEC...
...The Teachers Union, the National Educational Association, and the State, County and Municipal Workers Union have become major forces...
...This connection is supposed to have involved meetings between Fitzsimmons and men identified by the FBI as Mafia figures...
...No one asked him to resign...
...Given the protectionist character of some of the features of the Burke-Hartke bill to restrict some imports, the AFL-CIO—but not the entire American labor movement—appears in Europe to have gone "isolationist...
...Early in 1973 the UAW and the Machinists held a successful joint national conference in Washington, D.C., with both unions suggesting that talks of unifying the two organizations were premature...
...Unionism does have an amazing viability, no matter what the individual union failures, scandals, or policy blunders may be...
...Its Educational Institutes drew students from many parts of the world, but the days of high-handed operations in cooperation with the CIA, as outlined in detail in Joseph Goulden's book on George Meany, appear to be over...
...At the February 1973 AFL-CIO executive board meeting, Meany criticized Vic Feathers, head of the British Trade Union Congress, to American reporters in the presence of Feathers...
...The rise of economic nationalism, both here and abroad, has created more difficulty for the prospect of confronting multinational corporations with concrete forms of multinational unionism...
...Then there was the New York Times report that Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and Assistant Attorney General Henry E. Petersen turned down a request of the FBI to continue surveillance that had begun to detect the Teamsters Union president's connections with the Mafia...
...Auto negotiations in the fall of 1973 are expected to be touch and go—two factors, a highly profitable year and foreign competition, are operating for a peaceful settlement...
...Jerry Wurf, of the State, County and Municipal Employees, forged an alliance with federal government workers, and sections of the National Educational Association...
...Since then at least another 250,000 gain can be estimated conservatively...
Vol. 20 • July 1973 • No. 3
