The Hard Road to Union Democracy

...Often the ground for ob jection was not so much a program matic one—the role of the union etc...

...Rarick has also hurt his cause by demanding that the pay of the union staff be cut and that international representatives be elected rather than appointed...

...He has held several conferences with Vice President Nixon, who is known to feel that the companies can afford to give a raise without increasing prices, and, in behalf of his own political future, would like to apply a bit of pressure on them to do this...

...He went out of his way to undercut Reuther's position as head of the CIO, and for a while seriously played with the idea of forming a new federation with Lewis and Dave Beck—a scheme that was frustrated by opposition from the secondary leadership of the union...

...the expectations raised by liberal desires, unsatisfied...

...another result was that the many company unions which had been set up to comply with Section 7a were now absorbed...

...Many of the district directors, led by William Hart, an old Murray man who sometimes plays the role of elder statesman in the union, op posed Hague...

...Of non-Communist radicals there have not been many in steel, and their influence has never been comparable to that which they exerted some years ago in the UAW...

...And they are not...

...An opposition group, the Dues Protest Committee, began to form in some of the larger locals, especially in the Pittsburgh area...

...and because the steel industry recognized that, in its terms, McDonald was a "responsible" union leader...

...The good-natured and wellmeaning Rarick is a political primitive who has been conned into supporting Republicans, endorsing righttowork laws and trafficking with the McClellan Committee...

...A union, as a rule, gets the kind of inner opposition it deserves...

...When Phil Murray became head of SWOC, McDonald went along to become Secretary-Treasurer...

...This would have been something like a civil servant opposing a tax increase: conceivable with some, unlikely with most...

...For a good many years McDonald, acting the role of labor statesman, collaborated closely with the very industry that now—I write in mid-summer 1959 —has forced the union into a bitter strike in order, it would appear, to "teach it a lesson...

...Where Murray had tried to work out the practical implications of the Papal Encyclicals on labor relations, McDonald acepted at face value the much slicker and emptier notions of "trusteeship" which were being circulated during the early fifties by the conservative press...

...indeed, with little possibility for communication among its component national groups...

...but it may be that some important changes are in the offing...

...11 David McDonald entered the steelworkers' staff from the UMW...

...As I write, it is too early to say...

...He has been intelligent enough to surround himself with an able staff, particularly Arthur Goldberg, the union's attorney who does a great deal of its negotiating and policy formulating...

...They resent a strike while negotiations are on, and criticize the settlement after it is made...

...When he rammed through an unpopular dues increase at the 1956 convention—by a voice vote which, if nothing worse, was extremely careless (he refused a roll call)—the rank and file, so long dormant, began to stir...

...To them he seemed a johnny-come-lately, a slickie, a yes man for McDonald...

...but by the 1890s the steel labor force came to be drawn mainly from the new immigration: Poles, Slays, some Italians...

...About the steel work ers' union only one thing can be said with assurance: no ready-made for mula will take us far on the road to understanding...

...McDonald, frightened and chastened by the power of the opposition, has given up his Reuther-baiting and no longer talks about "trusteeship...

...McDonald rose to power because Murray and the UMW organizers were there to do the spade work...

...The active secondary leaders, men who run the locals and district committees, tend to support McDonald critically—many are ambitious for posts and honors, and it helps to have the international on your side —but a good portion of these people seem also to be sympathetic, in a somewhat distant way, to the opposition...

...The auto and rubber workers were thrust into large cities, which meant a variety of new experiences...

...he was a devout Catholic...

...this indeed has been a major tendency in American unionism...

...because there was not, at least until recently, any sort of serious intraunion competition...

...For a good many years the steel union functioned as a conservative force within the CIO, often on the verge of breaking away from the more "socially-conscious" unions...

...He proclaimed that he and management constituted mutual trustees in the industry...

...As a result Donald Rarick, a grievance committeeman from McKeesport and until then a quite minor figure in the union, took over leadership of the opposition...

...But shortly thereafter Murray died and the road was now clear for McDonald to become president of the United Steel Workers of America...

...On the first executive board of SWOC there 464 was not a single steel worker...

...Apparently, however, Hart and the other anti-McDonald district directors were not going to join a fight which had as its main plank opposition to a dues increase and which was directed mainly against the operating income and authority of the international staff...

...the members don't vote...

...Steel has a long tradition of efforts at unionization, most of them failures, and punctuated by such dramatic conflicts as the Homestead lockout of 1892 and the 1919 strike led by William Z. Foster...

...The steel union, however, won its first major victory in 1937 when Myron C. Taylor, chairman of the board of U.S...

...It was that contract which expired in 1959...

...They feel that nobody loves them, and in a way they are right...

...He says one of his aims is a two party system in the union, and this may now come into being...

...but he has scared away most of the serious critics of McDonald in the secondary leadership of the union...

...Originally he had been hired as a stenographer by Phil Murray, when Murray was head of the Pittsburgh section of the UMW...

...They know what management wants—and nothing has so rallied them to the union as the suggestion that work conditions be tampered with...

...The difficulty here stems from the fact that the union as an institution has not done much to educate the members, so that they have little sense of direction and little idea of what they can do...

...His only direct contact with the steel industry had been a summer mill job during his teens...

...Suddenly, McDonald, who in tree past was treated almost like a trustee, finds himself in a situation where it is necessary to fight...

...Not that the entire steel industry accepted unionism immediately or with good grace) When the union struck Little Steel soon after its agreement with Taylor, it went down in bloody defeat, and not until 1941, when the government intervened, did it manage to sign up such corporations as Bethlehem, Republic, Jones and Laughlin, etc...

...So it went until 1952 when Murray, having successfully concluded the fight against the Communists in the CIO, turned his attention to his own union...

...District directors have a good deal of autonomy and maintain strong machines of their own...

...When these actions were explained to him, he repudiated them...

...but they were kept in strict control, and then discarded, by Lewis' men who had behind them a long and violent struggle with Communists in the coal union...

...These company towns did little to prepare the steel workers for being ready to take an active part in union life...

...At first everyone thought that Hart, who had occasionally opposed McDonald on the executive board, would lead the protest movement...

...These people serve him well but, lacking any base in the locals, cannot threaten him...

...Yet it might well be that he, rather than figures like Murray or Reuther, will provide a model of the union leader of tomorrow...

...The steel companies liked this new kind of leader and showed it at the bargaining table...

...Thus far (August 20) President Eisenhower is cool to this idea, though it is not very different from what was done in 1956 to further his campaign...

...Rarick, for his part, is learning to keep his foot out of his mouth and in recent months has supported the administration in contract negotiations...

...I have remarked that by comparison with almost every other leading figure in the CIO McDonald seems strikingly without roots, experience, conviction and strong feeling in his relation to unionism...

...He took a much-publicized tour of the mills with Ben Fairless to promote "industrial peace...

...Murray came from a coalmining family...

...It is possible that U.S...

...later he studied drama at Carnegie Institute of Technology...

...As a result of such tactical errors, and also an almost complete failure to elaborate any sort of program for the union, the Dues Protest Committee was badly beaten at last year's convention...

...Neither by experience nor commitment as closely related to unionism as these other men, McDonald also knew far less than they the actualities of the life of the workers...

...yet in the United Steel Workers of America there is now an opposition group that shows signs of becoming permanent...

...A strong leader, too, can keep down a factionalism that often encourages demagogic economic demands...

...the very existence of this reservoir of feeling shows how poorly the McDonald leadership has educated the ranks...

...Steel staff pople are fond of saying that the workers are organized but not unionized...

...Pipe in hand, jaw set, profile more or less firm, he looks like the ideal homeowner to whom the bank will be pleased to extend a solid loan...

...There is evidence that he planned greatly to reduce McDonald's power, and at the last union convention before his death he made several cutting remarks that were clearly directed against McDonald...

...Still another reason for the relative poverty of the steel union's inner life is that at no point were radi cals as influential as in other industrial unions...

...Steel, reversed the industry's openshop policy and dramatically recognized the union...

...This meant that in steel there was now a labor force with almost no training in democratic procedures...

...McDonald, it is reliably reported, has been trying to arrange a "fix" in high places, that is, to bring political pressure to bear upon management to accept a compromise...

...McDonald on his tours with Fairless made a special point of denouncing wildcats...

...The seriousness with which Blough and his friends have undertaken this "crusade," together with the recent shocking defeats suffered by the labor movement in Congressional votes on labor reform legislation, has created a mood of genuine anxiety among the steel union leaders...

...Hague was finally elected, but only after sluggings at the union halls where officers are chosen by referendum...

...and at the present moment, in the middle of the strike, they really don't seem to have much of an idea about what the union wants...

...but an uneasiness about McDonald's "style," as I have tried to describe it...

...There has been a certain revival of life in a union which, like most others in America, tends to be a vast shell run by a small group of fulltime officials who have to consider the membership only at such critical moments as negotiations and strikes...

...Trade unionism, as he understood it, was his life...

...Here is an important section of the classical "proletariat...

...The repercussions that this will have within the union cannot yet be known, but it is a little hard to believe, at the moment, that things will be as glossy as they were...

...unlike other union leaders, he does not aspire to middle class values, because those are the values that have always and genuinely been his...

...Had the inner tradition of the union been a richer one, with a greater stress upon democratic participation and education, it would have been better prepared to meet the present crisis...

...When the industry finally was organized in the late thirties, the union bore the special stamp of John L. Lewis and his collaborators in the United Mine Workers (UMW...

...III If the industry found McDonald to its taste, there is evidence that a good number of the more active members and secondary leaders of the union did not...

...but when trials were held in several locals, the membership overwhelmingly supported Rarick and his friends, so that there have been no expulsions thus far...

...r.s.—Since the above article was written, the steel union has settled down to what seems likely to be a prolonged and "principled" strike— "principled" in the sense that it clearly involves a test of strength between the industry and the nation...

...In unions with a much richer democratic past, such as the UAW and the ILGWU, the usual opposition groups have almost completely faded away...

...liberation came to the steel workers through invasion...

...For that matter, six years passed between setting up SWOC and the steel union's constitutional convention in 1942...

...Certainly a majority take little or no active part in the union...

...In 1955, for example, McDonald decided to elevate to the vice-presi dency of the union his boyhood chum, Howard Hague, a former credit manager for a jewelry store, never a steel worker, and with little talent or experience in trade unionism...

...Meanwhile, the companies are holding firm, embarked on what Paul Jacobs has called in The Reporter "Roger Blough's crusade" to roll back trade unionism in America...

...McDonald won good raises from a trustified industry that could and did pass the cost on to the consumer, with interest...

...And though to some observers this seemed merely a personal squabble, it actually reflected deeply contrasting styles and tradi tions of unionism...

...It was apparent that if Hart had led the opposition, he could have won...

...IV How do the various elements of the membership feel about these matters...

...Today the Dues Protest Committee —loosely organized, without any fulltime leadership—continues to exist and still controls some key locals in the Pittsburgh area, locals well enough established to have a tradition of "ins" and "outs" among their leaders...

...Its leader, David J. DcDonald, seems closer to images of mass advertising than to traditions of American unionism...

...Steel may yet succeed in doing what no one before it could— convincing David McDonald that there may be something after all to the theory of class struggle...

...The steel industry seems deliberately to have decided to draw a line, pitting its will against the desires of the union, not because it couldn't afford to give and absorb a raise, but because it wishes deliberately to check the union's power...

...These men were tough, skillful, devoted organizers...

...The one time, in 1956, it looked as if McDonald's luck as a bargainer had run out, Eisenhower was up for reelection and Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey stepped in to persuade the industry that it was desirable to grant a good settlement and thereby help the Republicans stay in the White House...

...his tastes run to night club opulence...

...But the movement has lost strength...

...And so it would remain for several decades...

...The programmatic poverty of the Rarick group is itself a reflection of the weakness of the union...

...and even today, almost twenty years later, an important segment of the steel union's leadership stems from the UMW...

...This badly antagonized the staff, which has enough problems on its hands without running for office each year...

...One result was that the steel workers never knew the experiences of the thirties in quite the way members of other CIO unions did...

...but union democracy was not one of their credos...

...He is trying, rather clumsily, to establish some rapport with the membership through TV and radio programs...

...As it is, the whole image that McDonald had constructed for himself— the amiable leader who serves as honest broker between, and enjoys the confidence of, both benevolent industrialists and grateful work...

...His talents are modest...

...By comparison Walter Reuther is the height of intellectuality, George Meany the essence of plebeian authenticity...

...The union apparatus is mainly a grievance-settling and raise-getting service, but you take what you get and are not consulted about it...

...In other unions, like the UAW and UE, strike demands are worked out at GM or GE conferences, discussed in the locals and explained—or "sold"—to the ranks...

...Running for president against McDonald, with an illfinanced and barely-organized campaign, Rarick won over a third of the vote officially, and probably got a good deal more...

...but he does not sit in office nearly as firmly as, nor does he command the respect that is enjoyed by such men as Reuther, Carey, Lewis, or Knight...

...while most of the steel workers lived in small and isolated company towns, in which local government tended to be an extension of corporate power...

...They have to be, because in those unions the locals take strike votes...

...McDonald soon cut a new figure for a CIO leader...

...In fact, the convention recommended the expulsion of the rebels...

...Whatever the future of this particular opposition group may be, it has already done some good for the union...

...And this uneasiness, since it did point to important realities, came in time to be focused on concrete union problems...

...yet in consciousness, initiative and militancy it has lagged behind many other industrial unions...

...How many of them are hostile to Mc Donald, and to what extent, is hard to say at any given time...

...It was Lewis' men—Phil Murray, Van Bittner, Pat Fagan and many others— who provided the first leadership of the steel union...

...As a rule, they made more independent, informed and combative unionists than the immigrant workers in steel...

...In the meantime McDonald, confident of Murray's protection, ran the day-to-day affairs of the union and began to build himself a patronage machine...

...By contrast, in both auto and rubber— industries that expanded rapidly only after European immigration had been cut off by the First World War— the basic labor force came from native dirt farmers and small townsmen, often from the mountain areas of the upper South...

...And inside the union, never noted for its democratic animation, there has arisen an opposition group, the Dues Protest Committee, which seriously threatened McDonald's power in the last union election...

...McDonald has cried "dual unionism," a charge that is patently absurd...

...McDonald almost quit his union post to become a movie director, something utterly inconceivable in unionists like Murray or Reuther or Meany...

...At the moment, the mood of McDonald and his assistants is fascinating to observe...

...These men sometimes brought with them remnants of the populist tradition...

...They are often influenced by the anti-labor daily press, and have pretty well been sold the idea that wage increases must automatically be wiped out by price increases...

...Taylor drew a shrewd accounting from the sitdowns in auto and rubber, and worked on the assumption—shared, by and large, by most of the steel industry leaders through the war and post-war years—that a policy of cozying the union leadership would make things easier for the corporations than a display of hostility...

...the principles he had, he held firmly and deeply...

...For the rising industrial unions as a whole Lewis was a veritable Samson, but in his own union he had ruthlessly crushed the opposition groups which threatened his reign during the late twenties...

...For McDonald it was a rather expensive victory, since from that point on opposition sentiment has continued to develop inside the union...

...To McDonald it must seem that every secondary leader wants a staff job and every man on the staff a lighter assignment...

...The earliest iron and steel workers were either native Americans or British immigrants...

...At the same time they are worried about recessions, automation, unemployment, so that they can hardly afford to be anti-union...

...Most of the industrial unions came to birth through sharp strike struggles which trained a whole generation of leaders, and at least for a time, encouraged considerable rankandfile participation...

...Strikes, for example, are called and settled by the Wage Policy Committee...

...But McDonald seems the prototype of the trade union leader in the mass society: the Organization Man who does his job honestly and with some competence but seems peculiarly lacking in flavor, individuality or principles...

...The role provided for it by the Marxist scheme remains unfilled...

...many of them were independent and individualistic in outlook...

...some were former coal miners who had fled the mines but remembered the union...

...The membership stays away from meetings until there is trouble and then it demands that the union immediately solve problems that may be beyond solution at a given moment...

...That he draws support from some members who feel vague antiunion resentments seems certain...

...ers—has been shaken by reality...

...As Fortune said in August 1958, the steel industry "wants to see a strong leader at the helm in order to keep down the numerous wildcat strikes that have plagued steel...

...Whatever good or harm radicals have done to American unions, there can be no question that their very presence often helped stimulate internal interest, tension, controversy, the stuff upon which democracy feeds...

...This was both necessary and desirable, but it had some unhappy consequences, since the company unions had not exactly been an ideal training school for democracy...

...Reuther, try as he may, cannot erase the evidence of a socialist background which has predisposed him to general ideas and one or another kind of idealism...

...During most of the time that Murray headed the steel workers he was also CIO president, and this latter post absorbed the bulk of his time and energy...

...At the beginning, there were some Communists on the staff of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), mostly because they were able to speak the East European languages of the workers and therefore proved useful...

...Little, if any, of this can be found in the steel union...