PROGRESSIVE STIRRINGS IN THE AMERICAN UNIONS

...As a result, unionized construction workers have suffered greater unemployment than their nonunion counterparts...

...Factories inexorably move from city to suburb and from the unionized North to the open-shop South...

...Much of this differential may be accounted for by the differing industrial mix—the South with highly concentrated textiles and apparel, while Michigan and Ohio benefit from the richer mix of steel, rubber, auto...

...Likewise, if a petition for a union election can be delayed for months, employers can use the time to repress, subvert, or sometimes buy out the union effort...

...Efforts to block President Carter's appointment of Paul Warnke to lead the SALT talks also seemed to get more attention from AFL-CIO leadership at that time than did the pressing social concerns of union members and unorganized workers, especially the concerns of the employed poor...

...Most of the statistical material used in this piece, then, is rather dated, since it came mainly from that source...

...ACTWU now has signed a majority of workers at 17 J.P...

...Some AFL-CIO leaders persist in the view that organizing the unorganized is of no importance...

...Vital, warm, always good-humored, Fraser is probably also the intellectual peer of anyone in public life, even of his predecessor, Leonard Woodcock, a man of exceptional accomplishment...

...But they fight if they think they can win, and use whatever tactics they can get away with (including violence and murder...

...At the same meeting, in an apparent attempt to rouse some of his more conservative colleagues on the AFL-CIO Executive Council from their continuing torpor, Meany also harked back to the 30s when old-time labor leaders sort of shrugged their shoulders and said we don't need it, what do we need a Wagner Act for...

...Despite the recent setback of Atlanta's sanitation men, liberal politicians sometimes help public worker unions to grow...

...Labor leaders need to be strong, imaginative, resourceful, persuasive enough to "capture the hearts and minds of men," as Walter Reuther said endlessly...

...In any event, these words will surely be welcomed by the more progressive and socially concerned persons who have recently taken over leadership of a number of the more powerful American unions...

...Speaking before a meeting of AFL-CIO union legislative aides called to mobilize support for the Federation's revised legislative program, Meany said, "It is not enough for the United States to advocate human rights in the Soviet Union and Chile, while the human rights of American workers in Roanoke Rapids and Charlotte, North Carolina, are being denied...

...Labor's most acute legislative needs are improved miminum wage, and changes in the basic labor laws...

...Under the law a company such as J.P...

...They may perhaps be read as a rebuke to those leaders of the AFL-CIO who were to put situs-picketing ahead of labor-law reform...

...These are, to say the least, hard jobs to fill...

...At stake is the effort to narrow wage differentials that may run as high as $100 a week...

...Related to the internal factors, but vastly more significant, are the sectoral and geographic changes in the labor market that alter labor's base of operation...

...It is here, rather than at the AFL-CIO building on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., that the mettle of labor unionism is being tested...

...In most recent years, unions have been organizing new workers at an annual rate of about 250,000 and the 22 million Americans now belonging to unions constitute a record high...

...A NUMBER of the more outspoken among the new arrivals at the top level of labor leadership favor intensification of activities that will win and keep allies among civil rights and liberal political groups with whom labor was allied prior to the breakup that occurred during George McGovern's campaign...

...In absolute terms, unions have done rather well...

...But this was not true of the great mass of unorganized workers in the country...

...Reverberations from the women's movement are being felt even in the South, and especially in the textile industry, where close to half of all workers are female and relatively few work above the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder...

...Passed over then were the socially far more important and politically more popular AFL-CIO proposals to increase minimum wages and strengthen the protection provided under federal labor law to workers active in union-organizing drives...

...His running mate, elected to the union's second highest post, was Lynn Williams, long-time active member of Canada's socialist New Democratic party...

...The economic and social tremors now running through the society may yet have as great an impact on labor as did the dramatic population shifts from rural to urban areas of the past 50 years...

...They went to Nixon even though he had suspended the operation of the Davis-Bacon Act and thus opened the door for entry of nonunion builders into the federal contracts arena though they previously had been effectively excluded by the operation of that act...

...He is a vigorous and persuasive advocate who somehow ends even the sharpest debates without having made any enemies...

...But considering the hostility of most employers and much of middle-class America, the mere survival of a still-powerful union movement is in itself remarkable...

...McBride, though opposed by Ed Sadlowski, who was favored by many on the democratic left, is nonetheless likely to be counted among the progressives in the AFL-CIO...

...buildings union workers construct—high-rise, public and private institutions—as well as super highways...

...Growth in manufacturing employment, labor's traditional stronghold, has slowed down...

...It follows that they attach no importance to the need for labor-law reforms to aid union organizing drives...

...local labor markets might be expected for a time to miss the importance of organizing...

...Average wage increases of about $3.00 an hour were won by the General Motors workers of Monroe, Louisiana, after they voted to join the UAW...

...Department of Labor...

...In all my years of public life I have known no one so widely regarded with respect and affection...

...We are bargaining collectively...

...3 Nowhere else in law is the charge that `justice delayed is justice denied" more apt...

...When I first met him, he was president of UAW's DeSoto Local 227, a man so full of good spirits and unionism that he could hardly wait to get from the parking lot to his job when he came to work each morning...

...The anomaly of the day is that the opponents of trade unions are seeking to restrain the economic and political activities of unions at a time when their growth has been halted...

...THIS NEW LEADERSHIP may help shift labor's concerns to larger priorities...

...He would sometimes run the distance, he told me, so eager was he to see the people with whom he shared the day...

...Then and now Fraser has been an unshakable advocate of the socially most advanced UAW policies—encouragement of rank-and-file participation, racial and sexual equality, and liberal social reform...

...Leaders whose central concern has been with 3 Reports of the number of unfair labor practice charges are published annually in the Handbook of Labor Statistics, also published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S...

...In Florida, for example, AFSCME has recently made rather dramatic gains, and these follow the rapid growth of teacher unionism in the state...

...Solomon Barkin, The Decline of the Labor Movement, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1961 This report [is] about an important American phenomenon, the phenomenon of a great social institution remaining virtually unmoving on a plateau while society all around it keeps growing and changing...

...AFL-CIO craft-union leadership has apparently not seen that the erosion of its base can have catastrophic organizational consequences in coming decades...

...In short, they subvert all union organizing efforts...

...In New York, more than 36 percent of all workers belong to unions, whereas in North Carolina, where so many fleeing jobs wind up, only about 7.7 percent belong...

...In the negotiations with the White House, Clarence Mitchell, NAACP's chief advocate in Washington, apparently took the lead...

...In the most highly unionized of all the "right-to-work" states— Iowa and Alabama—union membership of just over 20 percent of the labor force is 6 percent below the national average...

...In relative terms, they have just about held their own...

...An updated, current edition of the Directors was to have been published in May 1977, but had not appeared at the time this was written...

...If you work in textiles, however, or clothing, or increasingly in steel, rubber, auto, glass, etc., you may find in the current period that your job is being spirited away to the hills where workers earn much less and may produce more...

...Others are likely to join them on many policy issues in an effort to broaden labor's perspectives...

...One day, perhaps, the Barkin-Kerr comments will seem prophetic...

...Later, he, Leonard Woodcock, Jack Conway, and I served together for a time on Reuther's staff...

...Mitchell, on the other hand, would be listed among those least likely to lead a charge up Capitol Hill in support of any effort to advance the interests of the building trades unions...

...It might be more correct to say that unions have existed on two plateaus—a plateau of membership and a plateau of ideas...

...leadership is...

...His outspoken criticism of AFL-CIO leaders has attracted more than usual press attention and may inspire others on the AFL-CIO Council to be similarly candid...

...by 1974, that figure was 21.6 percent—not a substantial loss considering the prevalence of Nixonism, and the growth of the labor force with which unions had to keep pace.' Nailing the myth of labor's demise is one thing, but that myth dies hard, probably because so many people want so fervently to believe it...

...The organizers at work in this campaign—young, idealistic, imaginative—resemble those of the 1930s more than any I have recently seen...

...The leaders of unions whose members must compete in national and international markets are driven to organize those markets where low wages and speedup may enable employers to produce materials at prices the organized shops cannot match...

...Douglas Fraser of the UAW is a special person to me...

...For weeks after the Congress voted to reject situs-picketing, AFL-CIO leadership seemed stunned...

...Some political ground was later reclaimed, and in negotiations with the White House presidential support was won for modified AFL-CIO proposals to raise minimum wages and reform the federal labor laws...

...Clark Kerr, President, University of California, Foreword to The Decline of the Labor Movement S ince Barkin and Kerr had their say in 1961, union membership has increased by nearly 5 million...

...In public affect, Fraser rather resembles Phil Murray, Steelworker and later CIO president...

...All are related to politics and to laws that favor employers and tie labor's hands...

...These are strong words coming from a man who not long ago himself expressed some doubt about the need to organize the unorganized...

...So wages, as well as industry differences, count...

...Following Walter Reuther's sad death, Fraser narrowly lost a bid for the UAW's top spot...

...Like many other black leaders, Mitchell sees the connection between low wages, low levels of union organization, and the pervasiveness of poverty among full-time workers in the South where black people remain concentrated...

...It does neither the worker nor the union much good if a worker discharged for union activity is required to wait two, three, even four years before reinstatement...

...The need for new schools, colleges, hospitals, mental institutions, and highways has dried up, and building trades unions have never been strong in those places where construction now continues...

...The failure of labor to keep pace with growth in the work force is based to some extent on the internal factors its critics harp on...

...William Winpisinger, an avowed democratic socialist, is the newly elected president of the powerful International Association of Machinists...

...It is to the eternal credit of the American trade union movement that they put up this fight...

...Twenty years later, the number had risen to a little over 5,000...

...Failure to sense the desperate need for legislative remedies in such situations might be expected from men who doubt the importance of organization...

...Last year, for instance, weekly earnings for manufacturing workers averaged about $135 in North Carolina, $191 in New York, $223 in Ohio, and $250 in Michigan...

...Elsewhere, however, in publications issuing from the same source as the Directory, some material of this kind has been printed, and from those sources I have concluded that the membership statistics used in this piece continue to be essentially accurate...

...Despite southern employer resistance to unions, new elements in the South make optimism about the success of unionism more than a Pollyannaish wish...

...The unions led by McBride, Winpisinger, and Fraser have a combined membership of about 3.5 million, a total greater than the 3 million said to be included in the building trade unions now represented on the AFL-CIO Executive Council...

...Employers' growing antiunion activity is easily inferred from the stunning multiplication of unfair labor practice charges formally carried to the National Labor Relations Board...

...In 1937 (when CIO organizing drives were at their peak and the Wagner Act was in full flower) about 3,000 such cases were filed...

...We are organized...

...Murray Findlay, Jack Sheinkman, and Sol Stettin of the Amalgamated and Textile unions last year negotiated the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, now powerful enough to challenge J.P...

...About the buildingtrades sponsored and AFL-CIO favored situspicketing bill, Winpisinger said, "putting the construction picketing bill ahead of everything else in our program was certainly an upside-down priority...

...For a period of time, Fraser was a supporter of the union's left wing and was in fact the left-wing candidate for president of the Michigan CIO, in contest with Gus Scholle, a leading supporter of Reuther's...

...After all, you can't build a New York City school using cheap labor in North Carolina, so building tradesmen need not worry about lowwage workers elsewhere...

...That is, in 1961, 22.3 percent of the total labor force were in unions...

...Glen Watts of the Communication Workers and leaders of electrical, hospital, service, printing trades, apparel, and other unions are likely to sympathize with them much of the time...

...Yet, how narrowly focused much current leadership remains was highlighted at the opening of Congress, when AFLCIO legislative chiefs gave highest priority to situspicketing legislation in which only the building trades leadership had any real interest...

...It is in the southern mill towns—where I have spent some time recently—that the American union movement may be seen at its best—trying to organize exploited, defenseless, powerless workers of whose existence most of the rest of us are not even aware...

...Whimpy's" election is paralleled in significance by that of Lloyd McBride to the Steelworkers' presidency and of Douglas Fraser to the same post in the UAW...

...In New York City more than two-thirds of the union work force is unemployed, and the AFL-CIO Building Trades Department set the figure at 27 percent nationally for the month of January 1977...

...For this reason, some unionists look upon the emergence of a new and more dynamic leadership in the apparel unions as at least equal in importance to the elections in the metal workers unions previously mentioned...

...Stevens and, let us hope, following that, other employers in the southern textile and clothing industries...

...Because of delays attributable in large part to Nixon appointees both at the Board and in the federal courts, more than 14,000 cases were pending before the Board at the end of 1975...

...They might wonder, however, why so much building is going on in open-shop areas...

...No such adjustments could possibly result from the unionization of the much poorer textile industry, but significant gains can be expected...

...Ten years ago nonunion contractors held an estimated 20 percent of the dollar volume of government-supported construction work, but now that share has risen to over 50 percent...

...By 1975 the figure accelerated to a high of about 30,000...

...Only among government workers has the growth in the service sector nearly been matched by union organization...

...The need to organize these unorganized workers then becomes pressing...

...The AFL-CIO base in the construction industry is being massively eroded.' The nation is almost saturated with the kind of In the Direciory of National Unions and Employees Associations, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S...

...Another die-hard myth about labor is that employers now accept unions...

...Products of the same culture—Scottish born, Roman Catholics—both Fraser and Murray (under whom I worked in Steel) have been steadfast in support of working-class interests but at the same time rather courtly and good-tempered...

...Stevens locations...

...A union upsurge in textiles is likely to unloosen new political and social dynamics that may tip the scales against many reactionary southern politicians who continue to win elections in unorganized industrial communities...

...Stevens, in the words of Village Voice reporter Judith Coburn, may discover "a simple fact: If you're willing to pay millions in fines and legal fees, you can thumb your nose at unions, the courts and the government...

...Perhaps as many as 600,000 textile workers labor in unorganized southern textile mills, or about 90 percent of the total...

...People who know McBride well describe him as a man with strong commitments to old-fashioned trade-union ethics and morality who holds a more progressive view of the union's role than others who preceded him in office...

...They are real...

...Now, if reelected, he will be able to serve about seven years...

...Jerry Wurf, the abrasive but brilliant and gutsy president of AFSCME (the huge, rapidly growing union of local and state public employees), has repeatedly voiced sharp criticism of AFL-CIO leadership...

...A few examples: — As a result of the civil rights struggle, and the consequent steady rise in the number of black voters, liberal politics has now won a foothold here and there in the South...

...It is at this group that some of the new arrivals on the labor scene have aimed their sharpest criticism, and it is perhaps in response to these criticisms that George Meany has lately begun to espouse the cause of organizing the unorganized...

...Corruption is hardly at issue...

...Still, the southern mix increasingly includes metal trades, chemicals, building materials, and others, with textiles making up about 20 percent of the total...

...They do, of course, when faced with no alternative...

...Even the relatively reserved Sol Chaikin, president of the ILGWU, described building trades conduct in this case as "arrogant," and Albert Zack, George Meany's chief publicist, called the move "erroneous strategy...

...As chairman of the CIO election committee, I did him the favor of counting him out in that election...

...In the ten-year period prior to 1974, according to the New York Times, New York State alone lost more than 210,000 manufacturing jobs, while states in the so-called right-to-work bloc gained more than 1.5 million...

...Department of Labor, rather elaborate reports of union membership, its growth or decline, industrial and geographic distribution, etc., normally may be found...

...These laws are designed to protect labor's right to organize but are now more often used to postpone and delay action on unfair labor practice charges—to delay for years the reinstatement of workers discharged for union activity, postpone collective-bargaining elections endlessly, tie up unions in court even when they have won government-conducted elections...

...2 lronically, the building trades unions, so badly shattered as a result of recent shifts in government and public policy, were early allies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...

...If union membership in North Carolina is brought up to the national average, about 250,000 will be added to union rolls, and the state will be politically transformed...

...They helped prod George Meany as he battered George McGovern during the 1972 presidential election...

...Many individual unions are shrinking in size and the membership of the total movement has declined...

...Still, the weaknesses of labor are not to be dismissed, especially with regard to the near future...

...Leaders of craft unions are accustomed to bargaining in local markets, where wages and prices can normally be set without a competition from outside...

...Stevens locations and has put before the NLRB demands that it be certified as bargaining agent at those places...

...They lapsed into silence and inaction...

...Other materials in this article reporting average wages, numbers of workers in the textile industry, etc., are likewise taken from that source...

...Rather large numbers of black workers are now employed in southern industries, and they tend to rally quickly and strongly to union organizing appeals...

...With support from the Industrial Union and Organizing Departments of the AFL-CIO, ACTWU has mounted active campaigns at all J.P...

...This company's conduct is so extreme, says Coburn, "as to raise the grim possibility that even in 1977 a corporation in this country might be guilty of massive injustice to nearly 50,000 workers and still be unbeatable...