After the Labor Merger
Seligman, Dan
After the Labor Merger AFL-CIO: Labor United. By Arthur J. Goldberg. McGraw-Hill. 319 pp. $5.00. Arthur Goldberg has been the principal lawyer of the Steelworkers and the CIO during most of the...
...Ironically, he is able to quote Walter Gordon Merritt—a veteran employer attor-: ney, and a principal villain of the i labor movement since he won the : Danbury Hatters case fifty years ago ; —in support of his argument on i monopoly...
...4) lend an impetus to major organizing drives...
...2) provide occasions for more union men to meet more other union men, and exchange valuable ideas...
...Goldberg demolishes in short order the curiously widespread notion that the merger brought some vast new monolith into the U. S. economy...
...As for number 4, no organizing of any significance has taken place since the merger...
...Goldberg concedes that the monopoly charge may be relevant to the situation in which a very powerful ; union confronts a weak employer...
...The chapters on this history seem candid and fair-minded —remarkably so in view of the author's close relationship to many of the men involved...
...During the years of the Korean crisis, he was one of labor's most effective advocates at the White House and at all those exhausting and boring, but important, sessions at the WSB about the equities of various stabilization policies...
...However, the historical sections were less interesting to me than the second half of the book, which contains Mr...
...The result of the merger, he argues, was simply one federation of autonomous unions rather than two...
...3) decrease jurisdictional disputes...
...My own view of these contentions is that 1, 2 and 6 represent very dubious and uncertain gains—especially 2. Number 3 is yet to be tested, but the news from Miami was most discouraging...
...that it proceeds, typically, from a simple desire to restore ; wage competition between workers...
...The first of these is the "labor monopoly" question...
...Goldberg extends : the monopoly discussion to the case i of the individual union, and con: eludes that there, too, the charge is unwarranted...
...Arthur Goldberg has been the principal lawyer of the Steelworkers and the CIO during most of the past decade...
...There is, however, very little about its author's status and achievements in the U. S. labor movement in this book—partly because Goldberg, in striking contrast to Lee Pressman, his predecessor as CIO general counsel, tends to personal modesty, and partly because the principal subject matter of the book is the AFL-CIO merger...
...This book argues that the merger will I 1) augment union bargaining power by increasing the moral and fmancial support labor can give to individual unions...
...His most conspicuous policy role was played in 1949, when he was instrumental in guiding the Steelworkers (and thus, indirectly, the entire U. S. labor movement) in bargaining on pensions...
...5) improve and strengthen labor's political action...
...Roughly the first half of the book is given over to a resume of the stresses which produced the CIO splitofi from the old AFL in 1935...
...Goldberg to re-evaluate the merger in a few more years, when his case for unity has been put to a real test...
...Goldberg's defense against the monopoly charge is considerably more persuasive than his assertions about the positive good which merger will bring to the labor movement...
...Number 5 also remains to be tested, but it seems to me at least relevant that in 1956 labor took in less in voluntary contributions for political action than it did in 1952...
...It would be interesting, I think, to get Mr...
...Philip Murray and Dave McDonald have used Goldberg extensively as a bargaining strategist...
...Indeed, after the fairly spectacular display of disunity exhibited at the Executive Council meeting in Miami last month, it seems reasonable to question whether the merger is going to make much difference at all...
...chemicals and Southern textiles, the last two major bastions of unorganized industrial workers, look as impregnable as ever, and the talk about organizing white-collar workers has so far proved to be only talk...
...of the ensuing twenty years of halfhearted "unity" negotiations between the federations: and of the final reunion in 1955...
...and (6) improve labor's lobbying activities...
...He addresses Reviewed by Daniel Seligman Associate Editor, "Fortune'' : himself to two controversial matters...
...but he thinks that "it is one of the s essentials of our free economic : system that we do not have governmental interference to redress every individual instance of economic dis-: equilibrium so long as there is no i general pattern of imbalance...
...but unlike almost any other labor lawyer who comes to mind, Goldberg has been something of a policy-maker, too...
...Mr...
...Goldberg's thinking about the future of a merged labor organization...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 10
