The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Power Struggle Over the Labor Law THE American people have probably never had a clearer or more dramatic demonstration of how our law-making machinery works than...
...It was not until the 20th century that they began to develop some little power and influence...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Power Struggle Over the Labor Law THE American people have probably never had a clearer or more dramatic demonstration of how our law-making machinery works than that displayed during the last couple of months...
...The men behind the "tough" legislation had tremendous advantages...
...Our first strikes occurred before the Revolution, but the first really successful and continuous trade unions did not appear until about 1800...
...It covers a lot of things besides "reporting and disclosure...
...They are very different, are organized differently and their objects and methods are not alike...
...It has, moreover, the advantage of propaganda techniques which go back to the industrial revolution...
...The real tug of war has not been between Republicans and Democrats, North and South or liberals and conservatives...
...At any moment the longdistance telephone offers them an intimate and effective means of persuasion...
...And all through the 19th century the unions were small, weak and more or less disreputable...
...Despite the fact that Labor fights at a disadvantage, its representatives did well in the long, hot struggle over the labor bill...
...They know the Washington leaders...
...They call them by their first names, entertain them at home and in the capital...
...First we had the Mc-Clellan Committee and its "discoveries" about certain smelly officials of the Teamsters' Union and some other labor organizations...
...These widely advertised revelations were not new...
...When these men determine their policies and make their statements, they should remember that the future is theirs...
...Some union men were fighting this thing a long time ago...
...And then came the McClel-lan Committee...
...It is necessary to point out that back of the three houses which I mentioned above there are two great bodies busily manufacturing public opinion...
...the daily press is against them...
...deserves mountains of credit for the changes that were made in the Landrum-Griffin Bill...
...And their lobbyists button-hole politicians and address legislative committees...
...When they agree to say yes to a measure, it becomes law...
...Anyone who will take the trouble to read the record of the debate about this labor law will soon see that the advocates of a "tough" bill were really not primarily interested in getting rid of robbers or gangsters...
...And, as has been the case with Taft-Hartley, it will be amended and whittled down...
...As the fashioning of the new labor bill has proceeded through the sessions of the McClellan Committee and the floor debates in the Senate and the House, all moderately alert observers have been conscious of the fact that we were witnessing one of the greatest struggles for power that has ever taken place in this country...
...The trade unions, on the other hand, are a comparatively new feature of our society...
...I am thinking, of course, of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act...
...A little history is a big help...
...A larger degree of honesty would have compelled its authors to add to its title...
...To be sure, the trade union leaders, too, have been developing political influence...
...But in all of this they are at a disadvantage: They do not have at their disposal money without limit—as do the industrialists...
...We were all sorry about union gangsterism, but did little about it...
...powerful men of industry are always in the right...
...Industry is dominated by a few giant corporations and supported by a wide circle of smaller concerns and individuals who are tied in by economic or ideological motives...
...and young people in most parts of the country naturally take it for granted that the big...
...When George Meany and Walter Reuther come to carry on under the terms of this addition to the Taft-Hartley Law, they will find that it is not too bad...
...But in general the old theory that each union is independent, that the AFL-CIO has no right to legislate about morals, still held...
...What they have been after is to cripple the unions, to cut down the number of weapons at the unions' disposal...
...We have our three legislative houses, the President, the Senate and the House of Representatives...
...If the House and the Senate disagree, they appoint a Conference Committee to hammer out a compromise—and in an astonishing number of cases the Committee is successful, and the smoothed-over measure is passed by both houses and finally signed by the third house, the President...
...Senator John Kennedy (D.-Mass...
...It has been between Industry and Labor...
...But they have gone ahead stubbornly and have really helped to elect members of Congress...
...The measure that was handed up by the Senate-House Committee is better than I expected it to be...
...These two bodies we call Industry and Labor...
...Everyone who knew anything about labor affairs understood that a few of the great union officials were thieves and gangsters...
...Their efforts are habitually denounced as if it were wicked for common people to be interested in public affairs...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 35
