Herman Benson's Rebels, Reformers, and Racketeers
Moberg, David
REBELS, REFORMERS, AND RACKETEERS: How INSURGENTS TRANSFORMED THE LABOR MOVEMENT by Herman Benson, Association for Union Democracy, 2004 195 pp $22 IN 1958, Herman Benson, a longtime...
...Ultimately, AUD prevailed, expanding the range of rights that not-for-profit groups could work to defend...
...A socialist who had rejected the rabbinical career of his father and grandfather, Schonfeld complained that the union's business agents took payoffs from contractors and kept wages low, violated safety rules, and cheated insurance funds...
...Benson pressed for publicity and inquiries...
...In an even more high-profile attempt to suppress dissent, Mineworkers' president Tony Boyle ordered the assassination of challenger Jock Yablonski, after Boyle stole a 1969 election...
...Moreover, the general reluctance of union officials to take action even against the most rotten apples is an indication of the overall cultural problem: union leaders frequently want so much to stay in power that they suppress dissent and internal democracy...
...What stands out in his Dissent articles is not so much his exposés of the bad guys in the labor movement but his indictment of the large number of decent union leaders and pro-labor intellectuals who make apologies for undemocratic practices in unions...
...Still, we need a better understanding of why so few internal movements or caucuses endure...
...However, with the old guard still in control of many posts, the international officers against him, and one of his allies betraying him, Schonfeld, who had won much-improved contracts for members, lost his bid for a third term—and organized crime regained control...
...Union leaders—joined by many leftists, politicians, and others—were virtually unanimous in denouncing government interference in the Teamster case, despite the sordid history of mob control of that union...
...Miners for Democracy, formed in 1972, ultimately triumphed, paving the way for the victory of Richard Trumka, who was later elected secretary-treasurer of the AFLCIO on the 1995 insurgent ticket...
...It also provided inspiration for union democracy movements in other unions...
...Two of the most prominent internal crusades were first, Steelworker Ed Sadlowski's campaigns for district president and then international union president and second, the long campaign by Teamsters for a Democratic Union and its varied allies in the Teamsters union...
...Unions must organize more workers to gain political power, but they need more political power and public support in order to be able to organize on a grand scale...
...But if this working class cannot defend democracy within its own class institutions, within its own unions, how can it be a dependable force to defend democracy in society...
...108 DISSENT / Fall 2005...
...There are heartwarming tales of rank-and-file union members who stood up against corruption and gangsterism in their unions...
...In the Steelworkers, the challenge was to win conditions for a fair and honest election...
...The heart of Benson's argument is simple...
...by the government...
...Wilson and Green were not the only union reformers murdered for trying to bring democracy to their union...
...Even union leaders with otherwise strong progressive credentials, such as the current leaders of UNITE HERE or the Service Employees International Union, as well as many with weaker credentials, advance a version of this argument...
...And sometimes capital works with union leaders against the reformers...
...Benson was surprised, because the union leaders had been leftists...
...The movements are difficult to start, let alone sustain...
...Meanwhile, corruption grew, and the contracts degenerated—the 1964 contract provided just one and one-third cents of increased pay a year...
...DAVID MOBERG is a senior editor at In These Times...
...Schonfeld's small group persisted, with the support of Benson and a few public figures, especially Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas, who consistently supported union democracy and rights of dissidents...
...As the local leaders carried on their protest, two of them were expelled by the president, A. L. Hayes, after he suppressed the results of an internal trial and issued his own verdict...
...Reformers challenging undemocratic regimes in unions needed help from sympathetic outsiders (although Benson supported limiting the size of all contributions, especially those from employers with a clear interest in influencing a union election...
...But there are also just as DISSENT / Fall 2005 105 BOOKS many heartrending accounts of union officials who looked the other way (or worse) and of the suppression, harassment, beatings, and even murder of union members simply because they wanted a clean and honest union controlled by fellow members and responsive to their needs...
...Benson and the AUD fought back: rules restricting outside contributions and requiring disclosure worked to the disadvantage of challengers and for incumbent officers, they argued...
...His enemies, though, were relentless...
...Finally, two employer insurance fund trustees were convicted of the murders...
...They manipulated elections, blacklisted critics, and played favorites in hiring...
...Of course, many union leaders recognize the potential power in mobilizing members or unionizing the organized, but they are not so willing to expand real debate and decisionmaking to the members...
...He provides ample evidence of how the Department of Labor is tilted toward support of incumbent leaders (and recommends that enforcement of workers' rights under LMRDA should be entrusted to a separate body...
...After all, if unions are democratic, members are more likely to feel support for the institution and solidarity with fellow workers...
...A common argument is that workers really want good contracts, not tedious involvement in meetings or divisive and time-consuming elections, especially when unions are under siege and need unity for battle with employers...
...The history of AUD had demonstrated the importance of outside support, even if it came from such a small and ill-funded group as AUD (which received modest foundation support and individual contributions...
...Benson concludes that there is a "great paradox of the American labor movement: democratic for the outside...
...By democratizing their own ranks, Benson contends, unions can both mobilize their millions of members and provide the inspirational example of a movement to strengthen democracy in society...
...He acknowledges that union democracy is not a "magic bullet," but "preparation for the long haul...
...They had challenged the questionable financial practices of the union business agent, but the union's international president was more upset about their distribution of handbills to members than any malfeasance by the business agent...
...But he was convinced by the McClellan hearings on union corruption in 1957, as well as by decades of his own experience, that violations of union democracy—from stolen elections to stolen dues—have been endemic in some unions, not just the result of a few bad apples...
...Even if that were true (and it's not clear that Benson would agree), the standard should be higher for unions precisely because democratization of the economy and society is at the heart of the promise of unionism...
...Benson suggests that reform movements stand to union bureaucracies much as unions stand in relation to capital...
...106 DISSENT / Fall 2005 BOOKS THE STORY OF the Painters union shows both the depths of union corruption and how it affects what unions do...
...He finds intellectuals and outside groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, inconsistent at best and usually absent on the issue of union democracy...
...The case set Benson, now ninety and still fighting, on a crusade for internal union democracy that has won some victories but has often been lonely and frustrating...
...But Benson contends that lack of democracy weakens unions (and the history of the Teamsters after the first President Hoffa or of the Mineworkers after John L. Lewis supports his argument...
...If it weren't for the insurgency in the Teamsters, Benson argues, John Sweeney's 1995 challenge to the AFL-CIO leadership would never have succeeded, and Sweeney's own success validated dissension and debate...
...His investigation confirmed Schonfeld's claim that even the socialist council president, Martin Rarback, had succumbed to the corrupt influences in the union...
...It did not take deep roots in the membership, but the idea that it is good to debate strategy and legitimate to challenge leaders may take a deeper hold...
...Schonfeld challenged the trusteeship, and a federal judge overruled the Department of Labor's defense of the trusteeship, setting up an election that Schonfeld won...
...It would also be wrong to conclude that these fights have been futile...
...restrictive and bureaucratic for the inside...
...It's an appalling story, but the kicker is that Hayes was also chairman of the new AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee...
...Ironically, what the labor movement really needs is commitment from leaders who have the power to defend and encourage democracy, even though they know it may lead to challenges to their power, and to have more democratic protections written into union constitutions...
...But the Sadlowski campaign led to new camDISSENT / Fall 2005 107 BOOKS paign rules for Steelworker elections, severely restricting campaign contributions from anyone not a member of the union, even family members of a candidate...
...REBELS, REFORMERS, AND RACKETEERS: How INSURGENTS TRANSFORMED THE LABOR MOVEMENT by Herman Benson, Association for Union Democracy, 2004 195 pp $22 IN 1958, Herman Benson, a longtime socialist and labor editor of a weekly New York tabloid, Labor Action, received a call about three leaders in a Chicago Machinist union local...
...Even more controversially, Benson defended government intervention, such as the RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] suits against the Teamsters, Laborers, and HERE...
...And some workers are simply not enough engaged with their unions or are too cynical about any collective action to become involved—attitudes that bode ill for union political and economic action...
...For me, union democracy had become no narrow `labor' issue . . ." Benson grants that unions are generally forces for democracy on most big political issues...
...They revealed that Wilson's union rival, Ben Rasnick, had ordered the murders, but AFL-CIO president George Meany, the Painters international president, and other union leaders did nothing during all this mayhem except, afterward, to appoint a committee that concluded there was nothing to do...
...and by outsiders, including intellectuals...
...Then Rarback was indicted for taking bribes on shoddy public contracts, and the union was put into trusteeship (with Rarback still retaining influence...
...Schonfeld ran for president and lost, after which he was blacklisted and expelled from the union, until the action was overturned in court...
...In this they may be no different from many government officials, but they often are subject to fewer external checks and have more control of the machinery to stay in power...
...Many union defenders argue that unions are among the most democratic institutions in American society or that there's no more (and probably less) corruption in unions than in business, government, the church, or other institutions...
...Workers continue to risk loss of their jobs or worse when they challenge leaders in many unions, even in cases where unions are not corrupt or controlled by mobsters...
...In April 1966, while an edition of Union Democracy in Action recounting Wilson's success was at the printer, Wilson was murdered with three shotgun blasts to his head...
...A month later, Lloyd Green, one of Wilson's closest collaborators, was also shotgunned to death...
...In 1961, a house painter named Frank Schonfeld visited Benson...
...But such monitoring was much more difficult in the international president's race, which Sadlowski lost...
...IT WOULD BE wrong, I think, to conclude that the transitory nature of these movements indicates that workers are not interested in democracy...
...The future of democracy in society, I was convinced, depended upon the working class," he writes about his early conversion to the cause...
...This past year, Sweeney faced an insurgency against his own regime...
...After a first stolen election, Sadlowski prevailed when the district election was fairly monitored...
...Benson counts movements in two dozen unions over the years, not including countless individuals whom he has advised, but only one Teamsters for a Democratic Union—has persisted over a long time...
...But Benson, who had long been a champion of the LMRDA's federal regulation of union-member rights, argued that union reform required a three-pronged attack: by energized members of the union...
...In San Francisco, a local secretary, Dow Wilson, was fighting internal union charges of slander in 1963...
...The implication is that democracy can weaken unions and that workers will put up with authoritarian crooks, like the Teamsters' James R. Hoffa, if they deliver the goods...
...Unions need leadership, solidarity, strategy, and other organizational characteristics, but democracy is essential, he argues, both for its practical value in building labor's power and, even more important, for the long-term direction of the labor movement...
...They were based on his attacks on other union officials for trying to break a strike that the union, with Wilson's mobilization of the members, ultimately won despite official opposition...
...By taking advantage of an earlier federal court decision interpreting the 1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, Wilson turned back the charge in late 1965...
...In this memoir, Benson tells the story of his work, including the publications Union Democracy in Action and its successor, Union Democracy Review, and the formation in 1969 of the Association for Union Democracy...
...Setbacks have been as common as victories, but the evidence from Benson's history is that progress has been made with the help of outsiders like him and the dozens of other individuals he graciously names (even as he candidly criticizes others), by government action (imperfect though it is), and by the persistence of dedicated individual union members such as Wilson, Green, and Yablonski, to name those who gave their lives...
...He put the local under a trustee who promulgated rules banning distribution of any literature (even the Bill of Rights...
...That's a fundamental mistake, Benson contends...
...Almost since its founding, Benson has also been writing accounts in this journal of fights against corruption and for democracy in the Mineworkers, Steelworkers, Teamsters, and other unions...
...New York was not the only place where the Painters union had a problem...
...The Steelworkers, the New York attorney general, and the Internal Revenue Service all went after the Association for Union Democracy with lawsuits and investigations...
...In the long run—and that's certainly been the perspective of the remarkably dedicated and persistent Herman Benson, that will be good for the labor movement...
Vol. 52 • September 2005 • No. 4
