Little Labor: the Forgotten Unions

...Of these there are only nine with more than 400,000 members and only twenty with more than 200,000...

...The American Federation of Government Employees has a membership of 55,708 out of a white collar potential of 950,000...

...1 Along with powerful unions are the painfully weak ones, unions that have organized only a minute part of their jurisdiction...

...There are approximately eight million workers in this field, (more than half as many as in all manufacturing put together) but only a half million, or seven per cent, carry union cards—and of these, 280,000 are in the food stores...

...In its packing plants are 130,000 men and women, working on highly mech anized, and in many instances, automated equipment...

...Most are unskilled and easily replaced in case of a strike...

...By 1937 the CIO Textile Workers' Organizing Committee, successor to the old union, had initiated a spirited campaign and won contracts for 160,000 of the mill hands...

...and they have become so powerful hat such charges as felonious assault, mayhem and inciting to riot, kidnapping and flogging cannot be brought against them in the controlled courts...

...The impotence of unionism in agriculture and its frustrations are typical of those of Little Labour...

...Their influence was, of course, far greater than their number might suggest, and should not be underplayed...

...Their idealism no longer has the vision that it often had in the 1930s, but in their personal attitudes are "true believers...

...The San Jose Mercury, having made a survey of the California migrant camps, described them on January 23, 1958 as the "longest slum in the world .. . village conditions in Pakistan no worse than some of the California camps . .. migratory families living under conditions similar to refugees in Seoul (Korea...

...Mitchell's problem is not that he faces small, decentralized employers with only a few workers each...

...On the more hopeful side, the paper lists a one per cent gain in employment at the seamless mills, and a rise in wages from $1.38 to $1.42 an hour...

...Between the two, therefore, less than twenty-five per cent of the nation's textile workers are unionized...

...The company reduced the knitters rate of pay and changed their work week to six days, six hours...

...In August 1957 the South Carolina 456 General Assembly approved six ordinances which required "a permit in writing" before any union organizer could solicit members...

...Broadcast Workers, 3,738...

...Glove Workers, 3,063...

...people employed in the production of goods was fewer than those in the so-called non-productive industries— government, trade, services, finances, utilities, transport...

...The American Federation of Technical Engineers, with 11,586 members, has only five full time organizers on its national payroll and four more on its local union staffs...

...A striking example is the Agricultural Workers' Union, headed by H. L. Mitchell...

...some eight and a half million organized electrical workers, but the Office Employees' International Union has a membership of only 44,647 and two insurance unions number less than 20,000...

...The mass production workers who joined the CIO in 1985-38 had the advantage that they were clustered in large groups and could stop production completely by merely refusing to work...

...Its impotence was clearly illustrated when in early 1958 it came to grips with the large mail order house, Montgomery Ward...

...But, despite the general growth of unionism in the following fifteen years, the textile union suffered a catastrophic decline...

...The Packinghouse Union tried to unionize the Sunkist growers beginning in 1954 but found itself bogged down when the employers refused to bargain...

...Hoffa's union saved it from ignominious defeat by insisting that Ward's agree to the same pact with the clerks' union...

...Ralph Helstein, President of the Packinghouse Union, spoke of this in a recent speech on "Moral Values and the Fast Buck...

...They must confine their union efforts to lobbying with legislators...

...But not only is there a large segment of the labor movement that is in the little category, but Big Labor itself is often, in truth, only a veneer over something essentially little, weak, tenuous...

...Standard Oil and Southern Pacific Railroad together own 123,492 acres...

...The paper notes that the "Do Not Buy" Chadbourn Gotham hosiery campaign is picking up...

...The union's jurisdiction, if federal statistics are accurate, covers at least 555,000 workers...

...The international unions of autoworkers, teamsters, steelworkers, etc...

...A worker is classified as a machinist but is doing tool and-die work, rating a higher wage scale...

...It has been fighting in the courts for more than three years to win contracts for five of the 132 Sunkist plants, but so far without success...

...The employees spontaneously refused to work, joined the hosiery union, and petitioned the Labor Board for an election...

...The number of corrupt union leaders that were exposed by various federal legislative committees over a recent period of five years was only forty...

...But Little Labor has been batting its head against a stone wall, with only minor progress...

...This united employer force has been successful in warding off all efforts to organize its field hands even though they usually earn below $1 an hour...

...There were 21,000 in December 1957 as against 24,200 the year before...

...Doll and Toy Workers, 16,980...

...In the early part of 1957 the federal government reported that for the first time in American history the number of Nora: The material in this article has been adapted, with permission of thepublisher, from Mr...

...The story of retail unionism in the United States is a story of persistent hardships and painfully slow progress...

...The situation has improved very little since John Steinbeck wrote years ago that "the large growers' groups have found the law inadequate to their uses...

...It is the propaganda and lobbying voice of the movement but it has no mandatory powers over its affiliates in such decisive matters as strikes, collective bargaining, grievance machinery, or even political action...

...But the management chartered some barges, transferred the oil to gangster-driven trucks with covered licensed plates and brought the fuel in under police escort...

...It has expelled unions from its ranks whom it considered to be corrupt and it has appointed "monitors" over such unions as the distillery workers when it felt they needed supervision...

...It is only where a strong blue collar union tries to enroll its white collar brothers that there is a modicum of success...

...Multi-billion dollar banks like Chase-Manhattan or multibillion dollar insurance companies like Metropolitan or Prudential are obviously more than a match for a union with 44,647 members...

...The auto workers have unionized 90,000 members in this category, steelworkers 40,000, and three other large unions perhaps another hundred thousand...

...The largest union in this field, the Retail Clerks International Association boasts 291,000 members...

...Of the nation's agricultural workers less than one-half of one per cent are in unions...

...Government workers, unlike their counterparts in most West European nations, are often prohibited from striking by law, and at any rate by custom...

...Average wages also fell, from $1.56 an hour to $1.54...

...The Kern Land Company owns 231,000 acres...

...It lost half its membership...

...As Business Week put it: "In manufacturing, the salaried workers' wage advantage has disappeared...

...The Atlenta Journal-Constitution on January 12, 1958 noted that "literally thousands of farm families in the 'Mississippi bottoms' area are hungry and facing starvation unless help comes quickly...

...The average wage in general merchandising and department stores was only $45 a week...

...Employment seems to weigh heavily on the minds of the hosiery workers because their newspaper reports a decline of 3,200 workers in the North Carolina full-fashioned hosiery mills...

...The company refused to grant a wage increase to RCIA, and after months of maneuvering, the union went on strike in a handful of stores while putting pickets around scores of others to enforce a boycott...

...They charge the union for "lost-time" for union business when in reality they have taken the day off to go fishing...

...One of the interesting sidelights in the newspaper is the plea that each local union "adopt a plant"—organize an unorganized shop...

...At Darlington, South Carolina, after the textile union had won an election for the 600 workers employed by one of the biggest textile chains, Deering, Milliken, the company merely suspended operations rather than bargain with the legally-chosen representatives of its employees...

...The big firm was more than a match for the tiny union, even though the agents received substantial financial and picket aid from the teamsters, seamen, and ladies garment unions...

...The teamsters have organized some cannery workers, but the overwhelming majority of the field hands are without union protection...

...Its day to day activity is restricted to relatively simple problems, covering small numbers of people—and monumental difficulties...

...The American Federation of Teachers has only four staff organizers and a membership of less than 50,000 out of a national teaching staff of one and a half to two million...

...When speaking of the labor movement it is customary to refer to the AFL-CIO as a single body of 13.5 million members...

...What makes this picture even more unfavorable for the union movement is the consistent shift of the labor force away from organized industries to the unorganized...

...The labor movement, it may be concluded, is strongly entrenched in industries that are relatively contracting, and has hardly a foothold in those that are expanding...

...are centralized, powerful, big...

...II Another important example is in the textile industry which employs 962,000 production workers...

...RCIA has made steady gains since 1941, when its ranks numbered only 85,000, but again its successes have been primarily in the food store field where it had some roots to begin with...

...Even the 400,000 field hands increasingly work with machinery...

...Of the 2.8 million in transport and the 2.4 million in construction eighty per cent are organized...

...In the early thirties the Communists made an effort at organization through their Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union, but their efforts collapsed after eighteen of the union's leaders were arrested and charged with "criminal syndicalism" in July 1934...

...On the contrary, agriculture is rapidly becoming a "factory in the field...

...Many are making homes in cardboard and other kind of makeshift shacks in the woods...

...In one year it lost 2,500 members below the Mason-Dixon line because the local unions there refused to desegregate...

...A report on finances indicates that the Hosiery Union had assets as of December 31, 1957 of $269,167 of which a mere $6,000 was in cash...

...This is a chapter in the labor story that is seldom publicized...

...In California, citrus fruit is a billion dollar industry, employing a half million wage earners, selling $3 billion worth of products and paying over $500 million in wages...

...In part it is the result of a feeling of status, and identification with management to a degree unknown among factory workers...

...That would indicate that it had lost a strike or organizing drive there and has fallen back on the boycott as a last resort...

...In 1940 the union reported a membership of 314,000 and in 1943, 400,000...

...The President, Alex McKeon, head of the organization for eighteen years, earned $6,500 a year...

...On the average they spent eight hours a week doing the odd jobs involved in running their union—after finishing their work in the factory...

...This is certainly one of the major industries in the country, yet the Textile Workers' Union, once a major force in the CIO, has shrunk to a mere 190,000...

...Three years later a CIO union emerged, but it had little more success...

...On rare occasions they go to conventions or attend conferences out of their cities...

...The corporations that own land include some of the nation's biggest firms...

...Issues of the Chemical Worker, organ of a medium sized union with 71,688 members, list similar problems: The union has helped twenty workers at the Summers Fertilizer Company in Maine "bust a company union" and regain their jobs...

...Little Labor faces the same difficulties in regard to the retail and white collar fields that auto, steel, rubber and other unions faced in mass production industries a generation ago...

...So far, we are told, the company has refused to consent...

...This campaign has been going on for two and a half years, since the workers were discharged, but the Labor Board has now ruled in their favor and they stand to collect several thousand dollars apiece...

...111 The construction workers who organized into unions in the nineteenth century had the advantage of being skilled men who were not easily replaced...

...In San Joaquin Valley alone thirty corporations own more than 5,000 acres each...

...Often it is a struggle against unequal odds...

...In the last three years it has added about 1,000 engineers, draftsmen, technicians and researchers a year to its rolls but there are 600,000 technical engineers still unorganized...

...Horse Shoers, only 266...

...It is my purpose to outline these practices not just to add my voice to those who condemn the few in the labor movement who indulge in the blatant behavior of a Beck, but more importantly to point up...

...busy attending conferences of their city-wide industrial union council, participating in minor political action, collecting $1 from members— if they can—for COPE, the political arm of AFL-CIO, and similar chores...

...None of this is on a big scale or indicates any tremendous power...

...But the center of power is still the autonomous national union...

...Cement, Lime and Gypsum Workers, 35,288...

...But of the twenty-six million people in wholesale, retail, finance and the services industries, as well as in government, only 1.7 million—perhaps seven per cent—are union members...

...But the stigma they cast certainly does not include the half million active secondary leaders of the 75,000 local unions in the country whose work on behalf of their union is primarily a "labor of love...

...Supervisors can do their work, particularly for short periods...

...From the first day of the strike the majority of the town's police force showed up at the plant and distributed leaflets to the strikers reproducing sections of the state's right-to-work law that makes picketing virtually impossible near plant entrances and prevents strikers from talking to strikebreakers...

...In part this is the result of the realization that white collar strikes are difficult to win...

...The company, however, is still fighting the issue in the courts and it may well be another year— perhaps two or three—before the matter is resolved...

...The white-collar is no longer the badge of respectability, and now it's lost its edge in income...

...These are facts that the average literate per son, even the one who is socially conscious, seldom knows about...

...By 1952 the factory worker earned thirty-four per cent more than his retail brother, $82 a week against $61...

...Cigarmakers, 8,038...

...Union strength in America is concentrated in manufacturing, mining, construction, transport and public utilities...

...The mores of our times have affected this secondary echelon just as they have the rank and file worker generally or the top leadership...

...In another column the story is told of the Wytheville Knitting Mills in Virginia, where the union, after an election, was certified as the bargaining agent on December 8, 1955, but where the company has refused to negotiate a contract ever since...

...Another item gives details of the Koppers strike in Kearny, New Jersey...

...A quarter of a century ago the average retail worker earned twenty per cent more than the factory hand...

...If the company is adamant he arranges for a grievance meeting of his whole committee with the industrial relations manager and attempts to resolve it at this "second stage...

...In 1929 salaried workers earned thirty per cent more than manual workers...

...V1 Our traditional American culture is so enamored of bigness that it seldom puts the spotlight on littleness...

...These are the kinds of practices that make ours the age of the 'fast buck,' the age where you get yours while the getting is good...

...Hundreds of thousands of retail workers didn't even do that well...

...The newspapers headline the victories and emphasize the power of the successful big unions, but seldom point up the maddening discouragements of Little Labor...

...Few, if any, are the invincible goliaths often pictured in the press...

...Polling 291 such officers in the Columbus, Ohio area they found in most cases they received less than $25 a month and regard their work as a "labor of love...

...The union came to terms only when the teamsters signed a five year pact with the company...

...Coopers, 4,012...

...At this level, the leaders of Little Labor are busy day and night trying to mobilize their members to come to meetings...

...Twenty years ago when the AFL Citrus Packing House Workers attempted organization, the owners assessed themselves a fixed amount on each carload of shipped products to fight the union...

...The economic power of office workers is slight because they have only a secondary and tertiary effect on production...

...It was unable to overcome the combined opposition of the mills, moving to the Southern states, the right-to-work laws in most of those states, and persistent harassment and terrorism...

...There is another textile union, formerly in the AFL, but it claims only 40,000 members and probably is even smaller...

...Two issues of the Hosiery Worker, January and February 1958, may give some inkling as to the scope of that activity...

...In 1958 Jimmy Hoffa announced a joint campaign with the office union by which the stock clerks and "pickup" deliverymen would be enrolled in the teamsters while the clerical help would go to the smaller union...

...His own salary of $5,433 (in sharp contrast to that of McDonald, Hoffa or Meany) reflects the general poverty and impotence of the agricultural workers...

...There are in the U.S...

...Glen W. Miller and Edward J. Stockton made a study a year or two ago of the local union officer and his background, activities and attitudes...

...the fact that the day to day actions just referred to are a form of corruption, part and parcel of the values of this commercial age...

...It just can't make a break-through...

...Similar joint drives with the teamsters by the butchers' union were highly unsatisfactory...

...The total number of small, relatively weak unions in the United States is far larger than most people realize...

...The committeeman tries to make a deal with the supervisor to overlook this trangression and reinstate the woman with her full seniority...

...But by 1943 they were left far behind...

...Or,—a member has taken a leave of absence for pregnancy and has overstayed her leave by three days...

...IV Little Labor also struggles along at a considerable disadvantage in re 458 tail shops and department stores...

...A wellknown unionist such as AFL-CIO Vice-President A. Philip Randolph of the Sleeping Car Porters, heads an organization of only 10,000 members...

...The Communists conducted bitter walkouts against extreme exploitation in Passaic, New Jersey in 1926 and Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929...

...Or they take a small present from the man who installs the coffee machine in their headquarters...

...in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 and in Paterson, New Jersey in 1913...

...Each of the national unions lives in its own separate world...

...This, together with certain familiar psychological patterns, helps explain why unionization efforts among these groups have floundered for many decades...

...Forty-five members of the union have been picketing this Mellon subsidiary for eleven weeks because management insisted on transferring high seniority employees to lower paying jobs, at its own discretion...

...Yet, despite this visible evidence that unionism has paid handsomely to the blue-collar worker, the office employee still stands aloof...

...If that is unsuccessful the matter goes to his international representative and is processed further, through arbitration, by the national organization...

...Seventy-five per cent of American miners carry union cards...

...It too can afford only five full time organizers...

...In Baxley, Georgia annual union license fees were enacted costing $2,000, plus $500 for "each member signed up...

...but almost no one has paid any attention to the scores of small unions which, quietly and persistently, continue to struggle for an improvement in the conditions of American workers...

...Window Glass Cutters, 1,600...

...Lens' recent book, The Crisis of the Labor Movement, published this year by Sagamore Press...

...There are some 75,000 local unions in the labor movement, tens of thousands of them—even in the big national organizations—that cannot afford a full-time organizer, sometimes not even a full-time office girl...

...Neither these nor similar efforts struck roots...

...but it realizes only a fraction of its potential...

...Though there were some two million organizable employees in this field, his union paid per capita tax for little over 4,000 members in 1957...

...In Fredericksburg, Virginia—to cite another example—the textile union won an election for more than 300 employees in September, 1957, but after negotiating until the following January the company involved summarily discharged the forty-two members of the union committee and forced the employees out on strike to defend their leaders...

...In the 1951-52 insurance agents' strike at Prudential, the teamsters respected the picket lines of their white collar brothers and refused to deliver heating oil to the company's headquarters in New Jersey...

...Bill Posters, 1,600...

...At this level, too, there is hardly anything that is big, rich, or corrupt...

...But whatever the cause, the fact remains that there is a very significant disparity in the strength of the tiny unions in the white collar field and the goliaths of management they must deal with...

...What of those situations where the drive for piece work earnings force people out of gangs so that those remaining can increase their earnings...

...In lettuce and asparagus harvesting, conveyor belts are used for assembling and packing...

...The grievance committeeman takes the problem up to the department supervisor and tries to adjust it...

...It ended," says Chemical Worker, "when management DID budge and granted security provisions which covered thirty-four men in the work force...

...Since its formation the AFL-CIO has centralized power to a significant extent, particularly in the enforcement of ethical practices...

...Brick and Clay Workers, 25,123...

...Such giant firms as DuPont have completely eluded its grasp...

...At the other end of the pole are such midgets as the Asbestos Workers, 10,000...

...In nearby Carrollton organizers were required to pay $100 a day for the privilege of "doing business" and in Osceola, Arkansas $1,000 a day...

...The tasks these and other men handled were the small problems that never get publicity...

...They are not covered by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act, although the industry is centralized and interstate in scope...

...It may be gone forever...

...What about lost time practices—is it always for union business or does it provide an opportunity for a quick drink or a ball game...

...Optimistic estimates of the number of workers to be unionized were given the press, but—even assuming that the office union can violate AFL-CIO policy and collaborate with the teamsters— it remains to be seen how far this drive will go...

...Great textile strikes were led by the I.W.W...

...A strike of fullfashioned knitters at the Morton Hosiery Mills in Runnemede, New Jersey is also reported...

...Many years ago the La Follette Senate Investigating Committee said of the California State Chamber of Commerce that it was "equivalent to a top holding company of employers' associations in industrialized agriculture...

...In the autumn of 1934, 475,000 workers responded to a call for a national textile strike...

...Though the union finally offered to go back to work without a wage increase if the company would reinstate the union leaders, management refused...

...This is Little Labor at its typical pace, fighting hard against insuperable odds, trying desperately to hold on, hoping for the great day when perhaps there will be a new swing toward unionism...

...But the twenty-six million workers in trade, government, agriculture, service, and white collar fields do not have these economic advantages...

...Unless some concerted effort is made by the whole labor movement on the scale of the 1935-38 effort of the CIO, unionism in textile seems doomed to many more years of impotence and frustration...

...But these are the minority...

...In the department stores it has netted only meager results, claiming to represent some 40,000 workers...

...The Miami Daily News on Febr iary 22, 1958 reported that "whole families are forced to live in the open...

...but the strike ended indecisively at the request of President Roosevelt...

...But the local union still has a certain area of small, nerve-wracking activity...

...Hosiery Workers, 9,917...

...But AFL-CIO is merely a federation of some 135 autonomous national unions...

...They have taken over many of the tasks, such as collective bargaining and general servicing, which formerly were handled at the grass roots...

...By now there may be less open violence, but the conditions of the migrant workers remain appa ling...

...Yet there are three times as many organizable agricultural workers as there are basic auto workers in the UAW...

...The majority of Little Labor's leaders are self-sacrificing and idealistic...

...Even at the secondary levels there are officials who make a couple of pennies out of their union position...

...How many devoted members," he asked, "will still distribute handbills unless there is a dollar or two in it for them...

...In 1956 their average hourly wage, both North and South, skilled and unskilled combined, was only $1.45...