Labor's Advocate
RASKIN, A. H.
Labor's Advocate THE LABOR REVOLUTION By Gus Tyler Viking. 297 pp. $6.50. Reviewed by A. H. RASKIN Assistant editorial page editor, the New York Times If everything in organized labor fitted...
...Just as a starter, of course, it might be healthy for the nabobs in the council to read the book themselves...
...The worst part of the current trend is the extent to which many of the newcomers in top union posts are merely pallid replicas of the pioneers they succeed...
...Every one of the answers is open to challenge, but the weakest is his case on the transformation of leadership...
...The trouble is it buries a lot of its champions, too...
...to arrest or not to arrest, to testify as it was or as he thought it was...
...About as close as Tyler comes to acknowledging that everything is not idyllic in labor is his admission that the movement has been late in responding to the shift of the economy from a blue-collar to a white-collar and service-oriented base...
...To my mind, the crisis of American labor lies in tired blood and the serene notion that the problem will cure itself with the dying off of old leaders, the changing of the guard through palace revolutions, or an expansion of the microscopic programs unions now maintain...
...These sections of the book are excellent, and made doubly intriguing by such tidbits as this one sandwiched into a long discussion of why no line can be drawn between the economic and political side of a union's mission: "The least common denominator of labor's political interest??and, incidentally, the least discussed in genteel journals??is involvement with those primary political potentates: the police and the courts...
...as Tyler would say, that is just another intellectual cliche, as tired as all the others he abhors...
...The book is packed with a thousand items like that, each worth more than a chapter in most standard texts about how collective bargaining functions or the intricacies of labor law...
...Labor has a long record of burying its pallbearers...
...Reviewed by A. H. RASKIN Assistant editorial page editor, the New York Times If everything in organized labor fitted the cheery picture Gus Tyler has drawn of the union movement and its future, Walter P. Reuther and George Meany would still be marching arm in arm...
...Tyler believes the intellectuals, not the unions, are stagnating...
...But even that slowness on the uptake he considers inevitable, because it was first necessary for the new elements in the labor force to develop a group consciousness marked by mutuality of purpose and will...
...They might not always recognize that Tyler is writing about the movement over which they preside, but it would be salutary if they did something to make the unions more like the Tyler image...
...Tyler has no doubts that labor is undergoing a historic transformation, out of which it will emerge a bigger, more effective and more socially constructive force...
...With him rests the power to be present or absent, to see or not to see...
...Tyler may prove right...
...He does a splendid job of accenting the positive and he makes it readable...
...He finds them repeating cliches about labor's decline, with the unfortunate effect of persuading youthful idealists that there is no future for them in labor...
...As one who has been delivering funeral orations for years over the far from moribund corpse of organized labor, I find myself in profound disagreement with practically all his conclusions...
...But I salute his book...
...You will enjoy his book...
...Even if the prophecy of a Rand Corporation expert comes true and a technocratic elite of 2 per cent of the population can produce all the nation's goods and services...
...He has answers for all the problems, from labor's relations with the Negro and the body politic to shaking off the frozen leadership...
...But...
...That is not a good enough answer for a movement that has stopped moving...
...Tyler is still certain that 2 per cent will want a union??probably called the American Federation of Laboring Upper Administrators...
...After all, Walter Reuther's chief stated reason for giving up his well-upholstered council seat was precisely his belief that the creativity and dynamism for which Tyler speaks have drained out of the federation...
...The verve is gone...
...What is more...
...Tyler's writing style is an adroit blend of Union Square and Madison Avenue, in contrast to the turgid prose that characterizes most tracts on unionism...
...most of what is left are the old slogans...
...it is far and away the most engagingly written, persuasive and well-integrated presentation I have ever seen of the case for unions as they are and as they may become in tomorrow's automated economy...
...The active trade unionists, especially those on the picket line, learn early that the greatest lawmaker in the land is the cop on the beat, with the power to make law with the club in his hand and the power to unmake law by closing one eye...
...If I were a member of the afl-cio Executive Council, I would move to have the federation distribute it as an organizing manual wherever unions are weak, especially among white-collar and professional workers...
...Not surprisingly, since his own entrance into the International Ladies Garment Workers Union was preceded by long involvement in the Socialist movement, Tyler brings fascinating insights into his discussion of labor's expanding role in politics...
...the self-righteousness and the arrogance...
...Tyler sees no prospect that automation will eliminate either the need for unions or for workers to be organized...
...That is too bad??not because the unions cannot grow without them??but because the young, change-the-world types will be cutting themselves off from the single most dependable source of support for worthwhile social reform...
Vol. 50 • April 1967 • No. 8
