The Labor Merger
LEVEY, STANLEY
It took only ten months to merge the AFL and CIO at the top level, but the real work lies ahead, in harmonizing conflicting labor interests at the grass roots THE LABOR MERGER By Stanley...
...Beck knew darned little about what was really happening in his enormous organization and that his labor philosophy could be summed up as: "I want what I want when I want it...
...Merger was a hasty business, dictated and necessitated as much by personal and political considerations inside both great groups as by logic...
...That is the partnership of Mr...
...By Wednesday, Mr...
...In six months or a year or two years, new power alignments can--and probably will--firm up...
...And what of David Dubinsky...
...Actually, what had happened was that Dave Beck had failed to scare anyone--George Meany least of all...
...There is fat in the organization??and some water, too--that will have to be eliminated...
...Those with long memories recalled that of the original group that in 1935 formed the Committee for Industrial Organization only David Dubinsky and John L. Lewis were still alive...
...In fact, it is a complex of unresolved staff and administrative problems and a tangle of overlap ping--and often conflicting??power groups...
...At any rate, during the New York merger convention (December 5-9) a few things became quite clear...
...Stanley Levey reports on labor developments for the New York, Times...
...How day the union was consummated, one sharp-witted labor reporter was publicly predicting the organization's demise within two years...
...As a matter of fact...
...Will the AFL-CIO jell...
...And Mr...
...Beck provided a good picture of a man running backward at a steadily faster pace...
...Meany...
...On Thursday, the last convention day, the Terrible Teamster, who had been shrugging off criticisms of his dealings with the racket-ridden International Longshoremen's Association in the east and the Red-tainted Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers in the west, was confessing that he hadn't realized all the problems inherent in the Mine, Mill deal and announcing that he and David McDonald of the Steelworkers would review the situation...
...It took only ten months to merge the AFL and CIO at the top level, but the real work lies ahead, in harmonizing conflicting labor interests at the grass roots THE LABOR MERGER By Stanley Levey It took twenty years--and some major changes in the national complexion ? for the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations to reunite...
...Meany, a man who constantly amazes his friends and enemies by his capacity for growth, is running the show...
...Take the case of Dave Beck, the perpetual-motion president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
...Obviously, time will provide the answers to those questions...
...Most newspapermen came out of the session with the idea that Mr...
...As with most conventions, the most interesting and revealing developments took place outside the meeting hall...
...To the accompaniment of the usual menacing noises, he let it be known on the first day that...
...Now, consider Michael J. Quill, president of the Transport Workers Union...
...On Tuesday of Convention week, he fed the press and then proceeded In confuse them during an hour of questions and answers...
...But there is one that seems to form a natural backbone for the AFL-CIO...
...Lewis, the aged lion, was out of the arena, snarling in his den of ingratitude, calling the AFL-CIO a "rope of sand," and dunning his old associates to repay a gift that has now become a loan...
...Now there is no longer a divided labor movement, only a hyphenated one...
...It was that George Meany didn't want it that way...
...One was that a great deal of work remains to be done on the purely physical aspects of unity...
...But he lost the respect of his colleagues, a vice presidency in the AFL-CIO (transit is represented on the executive council by Abe Spradling of the Amalgamated Association), and an office in the Industrial Union Department...
...Beck was saying that he would register not 1.4 million, not 700,000, but 400,000 members in the IUD...
...It may very well be that the sheer enormity of the AFL-CIO will make it impossible for one union, no matter how large or critically placed, to dominate as Dan Tobin cowed the AFL for so many years...
...Well, the historic moment has come and gone with--interestingly enough--scarcely a backward glance or a sigh of sentiment...
...People are involved, and that makes the job all the more difficult...
...Well, as things turned out, he soon found out the reason...
...That's the state of affairs right now...
...In the language of the horse player: "It figures...
...Dubinsky (who never paid a penny of per-capita to the CIO when he was in it) has not joined the Industrial Union Department of the new federation and doesn't know if he will, while organizations that fought the idea in 1935 with rigidity of mind and bitterness of spirit have flocked to affiliate themselves with the department...
...Suicide Mike," they are beginning to call him...
...The convention was not without its historical ironies...
...There are many possibilities for alliances and groupings...
...Now that they are back together again, the questions seem to be: Will merger take...
...some will have to be remade...
...Now the work begins...
...By his tactic in keeping his union out of the AFLCIO when everyone knew that ultimately he would come in, he won a lot of headlines...
...Others with a less catastrophic turn of mind were inclined to think the AFL-CIO might be here to stay...
...It also means hurting some feelings, stepping on some toes and putting a few noses out of joint...
...But Mr...
...Reuther, David Dubinsky and like-thinking leaders and groups in both wings of the new united movement...
...And that's the way it was...
...Goddammit, he was going to take his full membership of 1.4 million into the Goddamn Industrial Union Department or, Goddammit, he would know the reason why...
...A good many decisions were left unmade...
...As the AFL-CIO stands today, it is really only an expression...
...Twenty years have passed and the principle of industrial unionism, in which he believed then and believes now, has become an accepted fact...
...It was conceived, blueprinted and achieved in ten months--fast work...
...This means consolidating, reorganizing, streamlining...
...There seems to be no question that Mr...
...Who will put asunder what George Meany and Walter Reuther have joined together...
...It was a long time in coming and a short time in the making...
...These men and the unions they represent and attract comprise a powerful nucleus, a highly magnetic center that will not easily be disintegrated...
Vol. 38 • December 1955 • No. 50
