American Notebook Problems of Labor Unity
L., S.
The re-unification of the CIO and AFL, after twenty long years, will send hopes soaring in the battered House of Labor. The word "unity" has a magic which deeply affects not only the man at the...
...Many a group of workers has been able to escape from a bureaucratic conservative leadership precisely by this route...
...Thus, for instance, a group of tracklayers who tried for twenty-four years to democratize their union were able to achieve the result only when they could run to the other federation of labor—in this case the CIO...
...As a matter of fact schism rather than unity has most frequently aided the labor movement...
...Solidarity is no longer a labor principle, it is a mere tactical arrangement between union leaders...
...But if unity is born sterile, if it ends merely in strengthening the hand of top leadership, if it muffles the voice of the rank and file further, then it may lead not only to setbacks for labor but to future splits as well...
...the merging of newspapers and magazines...
...But too often what passes for a jurisdictional dispute is in reality an attempt by a militant group of unionists to get out of a bureaucratic or weak union...
...It is certainly no cure-all, no assurance of greater numbers or future victories...
...As it happens, the leaders who effectuated this merger want nothing but to attach themselves more firmly to the Democratic Party machine...
...But such a task is herculean...
...Such solidarity is truly a consummation devoutly to be wished...
...Many people will be released for other activities...
...the two groups will work through one executive committee and speak with one voice...
...Mike Quill of the CIO transport union is one of the people who has seen, and spoken, of this danger...
...Each of these latter is an autonomous body of its own, with the right to decide its own dues, call its own strikes, negotiate its own contracts, discipline its own members...
...They will weld together the staffs...
...Reunification is a defensive measure, born of internal and external fears, essentially aimed at regaining some stature in the political arena...
...All this adds up to greater dependence on, a firmer alliance with, the Democratic machine, and not political independence...
...In our own time the birth of CIO within the AFL led not to the decimation but to a resounding growth of unionism...
...In that sense we must all welcome the step taken in Miami...
...It pinpoints the basic danger of unity, that it may lead not to united action, but to greater centralized power, and thus inaction...
...Nor does unity promise more rank and file participation, higher social consciousness, the demise of business unionism and racketeering...
...It is hoped that rival organizations come together at some time in the future— that AFL electrical workers and CIO electrical workers merge, that the rival chemical, retail, packinghouse unions amalgamate...
...When these leaders like (or need) each other they respect picket lines...
...How will that square with CIO's concept of industrial unionism...
...It was the break in the 1880's between the simple unionists around Samuel Gompers and the "uplift" Knights of Labor that ushered in the larger and more stable AFL...
...Externally there is the mounting pressure from Washington, the conversion of the National Labor Relations Board into a virtual management instrument, the prosecution of quite a few union officials (mostly bad, but a few good), the "right to work" laws in one-third of the states and threatening to spread further...
...Unification creates a better mood for trying to resolve them...
...For instance, if the unified federation tries to organize the 8 million unorganized employees in the white collar and retail fields it must first arrive at a modus vivendi with Beck, who insists that almost all department store employees up to the sales counter are in his jurisdiction...
...What is expected by the unifiers is more jobs in the Labor Department, a choice of Labor Department officials, personnel in the National Labor Relations Board and a dozen other plums...
...There is no doubt, for instance, that the AFL teamsters would walk through a picket line of the AFL retail clerks in Los Angeles—and probably elsewhere...
...And what guarantees are there—if this point is not ironed out.—that the very vital help from the teamsters will be forthcoming for such a drive...
...Unity can be the beginning of these things...
...they will federate the city and state central bodies...
...In suggesting amendments to the Taft-Hartley law, for example, the united federation will not stumble about as at present, with the AFL proposing changes that help the building trades primarily, and the CIO proposing others of a contradictory kind...
...And CIO's split from AFL forced the older federation to accept what it had so bitterly fought—industrial unionism...
...CIO and AFL will no longer have to "consult," nor to bicker, for united action...
...The two lobbying bodies will now live under one name (though there will be a special department for industrial unions to be called CIO...
...It would herald the organization of millions of white collar workers, retail employees, the whole South...
...THE DISUNITY OF THESE TWENTY YEARS was not all harmful...
...The prospects are that unity in itself will not steer the ship of labor towards an independent party of its own but towards greater accommodation to machine politicians, Dixiecrats and those liberals like Humphrey-Douglas-Stevenson who are in the process of deliberalization...
...AFL and CIO are essentially lobbying bodies, with no mandatory rights over 163 their 144 national affiliates...
...Eugene Debs' American Railway Union and the Wobblies were pressures on the powers-that-be in the labor movement that resulted in benefits for the rank and file...
...Internally Reuther has his steelworker McDonald, threatening to "take a walk...
...The merging of the power centers may take years—perhaps it will never come...
...The joining of research staffs, educational committees, political action forces, foreign affairs groups...
...otherwise they don't...
...But we should not be mesmerized by the idea of unity...
...But these are distinctly secondary forces and distinctly secondary functions...
...Relations between Dave Beck and the Clerks' leadership are at the needle point...
...Un der such circumstances labor will not make the Democratic Party more radical...
...Unity on the other hand can act as a catalyst for conservatism...
...And vice versa...
...It conjures a picture of a strong, singleminded labor movement battering down the pillars of poverty and making its voice resound through the halls of Congress...
...AFL can not instruct the AFL machinists on when or how or if to conduct a strike...
...It hardly seems likely that with CIO-AFL unity such a safety valve will continue to be available— unless more basic changes follow on the heels of formal unity...
...but it would be folly to regard it as automatic...
...the Democrats will continue, as they have these past two decades, to make labor more conservative...
...What is now being united is not these power centers...
...The Chicago syndicalists of 1886 stiffened the backbone of the simple unionists in the fight for an 8-hour day...
...What is expected is a little political pressure to help at the bargaining table—as was the case under Roosevelt and Truman...
...That would be a gain for the labor movement revolutionary in scope...
...much can be done...
...the elimination of overlaps in organizing staffs—these too are gains...
...It would strengthen weak union groups, would close the gap between the 75c an hour worker in the unorganized fields and the $3.50 rates in the building trades...
...S. L. 166...
...The AFL unions that have grown— outside of the building trades—are precisely those, like the teamsters and machinists, which have accepted industrial unionism...
...it can also merely pyramid the current sterile centralization of power...
...THE TRUE TEST OF "UNITY" is not whether the federations merge, but whether labor achieves what we have always called "solidarity...
...Minority movements have generally propped labor's principles, 164 forced old line leaderships to put up a better battle...
...In its contemplated form it is rudimentary indeed...
...And a group of retail clerks in an impotent 165 and disintegrating union were able to improve their bargaining power by going over to the rival federation...
...Everyone remembers the twoyear typographical union strike in Chicago where literally dozens of other AFL unions cheerfully marched through the ITU lines each day...
...When the CIO communications workers won a 10c raise from the Bell System, it put pressure on the AFL electrical workers to get a dime or more...
...the machinists international union is the true power center—along with 109 other such centers in the AFL and 34 in the CIO...
...Even within the present AFL and CIO solidarity is practiced more in the breach than the observance...
...For what is being united is the two national federations, not the actual unions...
...The unification of AFL and CIO can be a great thing for the rank and file worker—but only if it is the beginning of true solidarity, if it leads to the end of business unionism, if it results in a wave of new organization, and a rededication to old economic and political principles that have been forgotten...
...In fact, if more were attempted at this particular moment the schism would unquestionably remain...
...These and other threats hastened the marriage, and if unity can change things somewhat it will be all to the good...
...Of course there were some useless jurisdictional disputes, particularly in the building trades...
...Multiply this by scores of lobbying activities, by the thousands of local actions, and it adds up to something of substance...
...Will unity mean that no union member will cross the picket line of another union...
...Such political action inhibits true labor solidarity, it subverts the interests of the rank and file worker to those of the leader and his machine allies...
...It is hoped but this is far, far from certain...
...Much will undoubtedly be gained...
...Walter Reuther's famous CIO convention speech in which he renounced not only a third party today but even for the future, was a clear turn towards the right, an accommodation to his new partner...
...Mere "unity" within one federation has not in the recent past been a guarantee of solidarity, and there is no immediate hope that this will change in the unified federation...
...It created useful competition between unions...
...Even the claim that disunity meant ceaseless jurisdictional strikes and squabbles was an oversimplification...
...Many newspapers have hesitated to endorse the Miami agreement because it might—they say—lead to an independent labor party...
...We shall naturally hope for the best...
...Each attempt at organization, at new collective bargaining techniques, at new and independent politics, will lead to the same dilemmas and conflicts...
...Meany has his teamster Beck, still a big question mark...
...The word "unity" has a magic which deeply affects not only the man at the lathe but his intellectual friend as well...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
