The Meaning of Labor Unity

...But in a free society all kinds of instruments are used for the achievement of justice...

...But their expansion was retarded by an organizational defect in the trade union movement...

...The organization of the total union strength in one camp will raise the specter of "bigness" for the enemies of the union movement...

...But certainly the growth of the trade-union movement must be regarded as one of the most important developments in attaining the present condition of health in our democracies and in refuting the catastrophism which beguiled so many of the "socially-minded" workers and intellectuals just two decades ago...

...By Reinhold Niebuhr The Meaning of Labor Unity Labor's continuing growth reflects democracy's ability to seek and secure proximate goals of justice The recent merger agreement between the AFL and the CIO closed another chapter of a decade and a half of social, economic, and political history...

...These contracts represent the advance in our social history from the days when Ford workers were "laid off" every August for "retooling" and when they lost practically a year of work in the fateful year when the sales of the old Model T suddenly collapsed and the new Model A was not yet ready...

...It required a decade to rid the CIO of the Communists, but that task has been accomplished...

...They have parallels in the West European democracies...

...It may well be that these past fifteen years made the difference between the decadent capitalism of France, for instance, and the comparative health of our own...

...It isn't exactly ancient history, but some may have forgotten that the man who fashioned the instrument by which the mass production industries were organized was John L. Lewis...

...The right to organize and bargain collectively was still widely challenged, and labor lacked the power to stand up against the ever growing capital integrations in our economy...

...The trade-union movement was not as strong a decade and a half ago as it is today...

...At any rate, the development of the trade-union movement which was made possible by the two types of unions, craft and industrial, added to the forces and factors which have transmuted the social and political situation in America...

...Trade unions expanded...

...Their skills could be acquired without long apprenticeship...

...The new industrial unions were so successful in setting collective power against collective power, and the companies proved themselves, in the end, so flexible in coming to terms with the unions, that long-term contracts with escalator clauses, allowing for increased wages according to the price index, and an annual bonus for higher productivity are now established procedure...

...The workers who needed collective bargaining most were in the great mass-production industries...

...They also represent an advance over the conditions when the "speed-up" in the Ford factories was notorious among the workers and stood in ironic contrast to Mr...

...They were known as "semi-skilled...

...The lesson to be learned is that the search for proximate goals of justice amid the complexities of a technical civilization is more important than the blueprints for Utopia to which the sensitive spirits of a few decades ago were so much addicted...

...Certainly the developments in this nation are not altogether unique...

...Certainly, Lewis gave the new organization the driving force required for its task...

...Ford's world-wide reputation as a humanitarian...

...But the danger, if any, of such a large organization to the democratic balance can be considered fairly only in the context of the larger problem of the bigness of social and economic units in our society generally...

...Lewis's monumental egotism does not make him a hero even in the labor movement, except perhaps among his miners...

...There is certainly less danger in balanced bigness than in unbalanced bigness...

...Then came the New Deal and the political encouragement of labor organization...

...The old craft unions were quite incapable of organizing the automotive industry...

...On the other hand, the practical and spontaneous reaction to particular situations of injustice, and the invention of new social techniques for establishing social and economic equilibria, corrected injustices and gave our free society a health which made it immune to the Communist virus...

...But the old craft unions could not achieve this task...

...But the humaneness is not so much the fruit of the character of one man as it is the consequence of a new social climate and of a better equilibrium of social forces, without which no society can attain Justice...

...They needed a union of the industrial type, which could organize all the workers in the industry...

...I well remember the year 1926 when the AFL announced that it would organize the Detroit automotive industry...

...We have moved from a situation in which American productivity threatened to destroy itself by its very inventiveness, to a comparatively secure, healthy economy and a new political climate...

...That is how the Communists infiltrated into the CIO...

...Without such power, it is difficult to see how a mass market for the ever growing productivity of our industry could have been maintained...

...It would he idle to speculate on just what forces and factors entered into the balances of social forces which changed our society in the past two decades so that the catastrophism of the Thirties gave way to the sense of security, bordering on complacency, of our decade...

...Therefore, the old craft unions were not suited for them...

...In this climate, the "bosses" who still talk incessantly of "free enterprise" have not only had the wit to come to terms with the collective strength of the workers but have put a Republican administration in power which promises to preserve all the minimal social securities which a political society must maintain as a "floor" of justice against the hazards of economic society...

...The Detroit Board of Commerce was scared at this gesture, but it proved to be only a gesture...

...It required another decade to organize it under different auspices...

...His grandson, with fewer pretensions, presides over a much more humane industrial process...

...It may also be remembered that John Lewis was not exactly scrupulous in the agents he picked for his organizational tasks...

...they were among the original organizers...

...The significance of this development lies in the fact that the ideologies, with their pretensions of discerning a "logic" of history, were a source of confusion...

...Perhaps it was a simple problem to devise a new type of organization for these workers...