Labor Morality

...Meany's attempts to ostracize it proved futile...

...But, as Hutchinson notes, all these were amateurs, at home in their industries, up from the shops, trade unionists with a flaw, poorly prepared for the temptations of office yet usually entitled to some claim of legitimacy and service, seldom lethal if often brutal and not too hard to frighten into virtue once the odds had changed...

...It took a brave man to stand against the mob's enforcers...

...What crime did he commit...

...The law might have become a useful supplement to labor's own self-policing activities, but the federation chose instead to buck it at almost every stage of its movement through Congress...

...The convention rose to its constitutional mandate to keep the pooled organization "free from any taint of corruption...

...It would help even more if it were extended to cover every matter in which members felt the cards had been stacked against them by the union officialdom...

...Industry has never really helped in the purgative process...

...Labor Czars, published in 1938 when the New Deal was bringing millions of workers in steel, autos and other basic industries into union ranks for the first time and most reformers confidently expected that John L. Lewis and the cio would soon swallow up the venal old afl...

...Reuther's uaw remains the banner-carrier in this respect...

...Even now the Nixon Administration is pressing for tighter laws to keep light-fingered, inattentive or incompetent trustees from dissipating the resources of pension funds, today estimated at $120 billion and still growing fast...

...Meanwhile the underworld became more sophisticated in its approaches and in the multiplicity of its tentacles in "legitimate business...

...I've got mine," said a Detroit truck driver at the height of the McClellan tv spectaculars...

...His motto: "Show me an honest man, and I'll show you a fool...

...The Public Review Board it established in 1957 affords all members of the auto union an impartial and independent review of any grievance they have against the union for violation of their individual rights or of the afl-cio ethics codes...

...In Chicago the dominant labor hood was "Skinny" Madden, an ex-hobo who ruled with gun and blackjack...

...Responsibility brought a profound change in the Bronx plumber...

...The implausibility of that joint endeavor was perhaps best indicated last October 15 when a uaw-Teamster conference on tax reform happened to coincide with the mass observance in Washington of Vietnam Moratorium Day...

...The idea merits much wider adoption...

...It did not happen often and, when it did, ma-chineguns usually reversed the outcome...

...Once the merger was consummated, Meany outdid all the old Socialists in zeal for a clean labor movement...

...Had most unionists not already grown tired of the antiracket drive and skeptical of its accomplishments, they would not have allowed the great majority to cheerfully seize the opportunity to cop out on further efforts to upgrade the general state of union morality...

...Chairman Ernst: "I do not think that Alcatraz Island is before the convention...

...To be sure, Hoffa, a brilliant roughneck with a talent for self-destruction, is unlikely to fulfill the personal forecast he made to his members when he went off to the Federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, three years ago...

...you'll weep before we will...

...It is an even better job than Harold Seidman did in his classic...

...The Capone mob and its lesser counterparts in every metropolitan center became large-scale merchandisers of "protection" to both sides, creating industrial disputes or turning them off with equal ease...

...One of his first acts on taking command was to dust off an unused and all-but-forgotten resolution the New Orleans convention had reluctantly adopted after the Dubinsky-Fay clash—a watered-down version of the one that had infuriated Fay...

...Nevertheless, the exiled truck union is bigger and more powerful than ever...

...When the teamsters finally walked the plank, most of those who voted behind Meany to shove them out privately agreed with the defiant boast of John F. English, the truck union's frosty-faced secretary-treasurer, as he led his exiled delegation onto the chilly boardwalk: "It's all right...

...This was the union with make-or-break power over strikes and organizing campaigns conducted by weaker unions...

...The afl-cio Ethical Practices Committee, official keeper of the federation's spiritual armor, has not met in more than 10 years...

...The nomination of Al Capone is not before the convention...

...It will give the members more of a sense that the union is really their organization, a sense few have despite the panoply of guarantees Landrum-Griffin affords them...

...The notion that Meany would ever become an avenging dragon striking down the malefactors in labor's ranks would have seemed unthinkable even as late as 1940, when Fay slugged Dubinsky at the afl convention in New Orleans because of bitterness at the presumption of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union chief in asking the federation to move against unions that refused to purge themselves of corrupt elements...

...And the example of industrial buccaneers making quick fortunes through market manipulation and other schemes on the outer fringes of the law is scarcely calculated to spark an all-consuming moral flame in the breast of union leaders still insecure in the exercise and enjoyment of their new-found economic, political and social power...

...The shift to the big-time crook and terrorist came with the Prohibition era and the entry into "the labor business" of the professional racketeers...

...Racket influence is probably less assertive than it once was in the teamsters' national headquarters, but that is because power has drained away from the central organization under the caretaker leadership of Hoffa's old lieutenant, Frank Fitzsimmons...

...Rather, it was an expression of conscience by a handful of top unionists, notable among them Walter P. Reuther, David Dubinsky, Jacob S. Potofsky, James B. Carey, Alex Rose, and Arthur J. Goldberg —all men with backgrounds of social concern, a sense that labor had to stand for something more than the lowest common denominator of the marketplace...

...Those who think Jimmy Hoffa is out of the picture don't know what kind of stuff a teamster is made of," he said...

...Meany first came to prominence as the ally of such pillars of nonvirtue as Joseph P. Ryan of the International Longshoremen's Association (ila) and Joseph S. Fay of the Operating Engineers...

...The sordid story of racket penetration, of shakedowns and sellouts, of betraying membership rights, of looting union treasuries and fraud in the administration of trust funds, had been spread over thousands of pages of sworn testimony in televised Senate hearings...

...Now the two giant unions are partners in an Alliance for Labor Action dedicated to "revitalizing" American labor and making it an effective instrument for social progress...

...All of the foregoing is a circuitous way of saying that John Hutchinson, a professor of industrial relations at the University of California in Los Angeles, has done a first-class job in this book of setting forth the history of corruption in American labor, and of analyzing its implications for both labor and society...

...The rank and file is usually even less demanding in its standards of probity...

...But far more important than any of these men in putting insistence into the move to boot out the teamsters was a leader of very different background, George Meany, who had climbed to top place in a unified labor movement from the swamp of the New York building trades...

...It has screamed for punitive legislation, but few businessmen have had the courage to come forward and testify to shakedowns or other abuses by racket unions...

...Raskin Assistant editorial page editor oj the New York "Times" The bravest hour in the postwar history of American labor came on a rainy morning in December 1957, when the afl-cio convention in Atlantic City expelled the federation's biggest and strongest affiliate, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, because it had brought dishonor on all labor by its failure to purge itself of corruption...

...There is the illuminating story of Ted Brandle and his lucrative partnership with Frank ("I am the law") Hague in Jersey City—and of the breakup of that partnership as the Great Depression made Hague decide to turn to low pay and unionbusting on his public works...

...The Upholsterers and the American Federation of Teachers have similar impartial appeals mechanisms...

...If the Supreme Court upholds the second of his two convictions before he ends the term he is now serving, however, he will never get another chance to sit on his leather throne behind the big desk in the Teamster Taj Mahal, glaring through its picture windows at the dome of the Capitol less than a mile away...

...That day is nowhere in sight, but its distance is no alibi for a slackening of efforts at self-improvement in a period when all institutions need something more than a crumbling niche in a challenged society...

...Competitive industries with many small employers were their prey—the needle trades, trucking, hotel and restaurant, building service, the theatrical trades, and the waterfront...

...The result was a field day for antilabor forces on Capitol Hill...

...Mr...

...In those days union autonomy stood as an impenetrable wall against intrusion by the federation on the internal affairs of its affiliates, and Meany was among those determined to resist any breaking down of that wall...

...In a real sense, of course, the end of corruption in organized labor will not come until the Golden Rule settles over industry, government and every other aspect of American life...

...Hutchinson starts at the turn of the century when grafters like Samuel J. Parks and Robert P. Brindell dominated the building trades in New York, sharing their loot with the police and Tammany Hall...

...I take great pleasure now, after having been disturbed both by the insane people and those who want to stop progress, in seconding the nomination of George McLane...

...Insull, I liked him, too, because he was a wonderful character and a generous gentleman, but no more than Scarface Al Brown...

...I used to wait on Sam Insull...

...That moldy document became the basis for expulsion in 1953 of Meany's old pals in the ila...

...But this tolerance does not dispose of the argument that unions will be less vulnerable to corruption if they infuse more vitality into their internal democracy...

...If you desire to second the nomination of a candidate, all right...

...So many afl-cio unions entered into backdoor alliances with the pariahs that the federation soon abandoned any pretense of enforcing the nonfra-temization rule...

...The uaw delegates came to the conference with peace buttons in their lapels...

...the teamsters wore American flags...

...Despite the bravado of the cast-outs, it was a proud moment for a movement built on the quest for "more and better" and steeped in the concept that each international union is sovereign in its own domain, allergic to intervention by either government or parent federation...

...The McClellan Committee revelations and the self-policing activities of the afl-cio did not end underworld penetration...

...Even before he succeeded the fumbling William Green as afl president in 1952, Meany came to the realization that underworld penetration could undo labor in public esteem and in usefulness to its own members...

...One such was Hugo Ernst, the mild-mannered international vice president and later president of the Hotel and Restaurant Employes Union, in the period when the Capone gang was using death threats and a $100,000 "hospitality fund" to back up its efforts to take over the union presidency...

...But much of what went through was decidedly salutary, both as a contribution to integrity within labor and as a safeguard for internal democracy...

...He was a gentleman, and he wasn't a thug...

...Why shouldn't Hoffa get his...

...It became dormant when Congress passed the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 as an outgrowth of the revelations of the McCIellan Committee, with Robert F. Kennedy as its embattled chief counsel...

...Delegate Parker: "If I lived in San Francisco, I would start a movement to move that disgraceful rock from this community...

...They loaded up the measure with many sections that seemed more likely to weaken unions than to strengthen their honesty...

...Hearings held by the New York State Crime Commission had shown how the longshore union had turned into an instrument of plunder that had hoisted the Jolly Roger over the Port of New York and stopped giving even nominal attention to the welfare of the dock workers...

...They need us more than we need them," was his good-by message...

...In his anatomy of labor corruption, Hutchinson disputes the easy explanation that the basic fault lies with the whole idea of business unionism...

...Control is back in the hands of the local barons and the voice of the mob is still heard loud and clear by many of them...

...No business organization and no legislative body, from Capitol Hill to municipal sewer board, had ever shown such persistence or such willingness to endure sacrifice in the mission of self-policing...

...Chairman Ernst: "The gentleman is evidently seconding the nomination of Al Capone...

...Progress, as represented by McLane and Capone, lost...

...Surely, the social unionists in both the afl and cio, those who saw unionism as a moral cause, were sturdier foes of racket incursions than those whose views of union function was bounded by the tour corners of the paycheck...

...neither has the Landrum-Grif-fin Act...

...On the contrary, every investigation makes it plain that many employers have become willing accomplices of union crooks in rigging the market or buying "labor peace" on a basis that condemns their workers to exploitation...

...I'll be back...

...Perhaps their conversion might have been slower if the Cio itself were not falling apart under pressure from the steel workers, the transport workers and others restive under Reu-ther's leadership...

...Jimmy Hoffa, prevented by a date with a Federal judge in New York from being on the scene, put it even more succinctly...

...Every page was a repudiation of the Ethical Practices Codes that had been a foundation stone of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations merger only two years before, after two decades of civil war...

...Yet today, not much more than a decade later, the prophecies of Hoffa and English are standing up better than those of their flagellants...

...whether it cut off the flow of raw materials and finished goods or let them go through could represent the difference between victory and rout for unions with less economic muscle...

...I came in contact with a wonderful character by the name of Al Brown, afterwards they hung on him the name of Al Capone...

...It had already acted to oust or to force cleanups in other gang-infested unions, but the teamsters represented the pivotal test of probity...

...The passion for purity that Meany displayed in this and other episodes helped overcome the conviction of Reuther, Carey and other moralists in the mass production unions of the no that the afl was a sink of sin impossible for decent unionists to be happy in...

...The same cops who helped Brandle build his empire smashed it...

...The stakes grew bigger after World War II as the mushroom development of pension and welfare funds pushed the money to be manipulated from millions of dollars to billions...

...The decision to put the teamster colossus outside the House of Labor was made with proper deference to due process, yet it would be an exaggeration to pretend that it reflected a vast outpouring of indignation from the rank and file, either of the truck union or of labor generally...

...he is a victim of the bankers' racket...

...That will be a help in contract ratification as well as in keeping ethical standards high...

...Yet he concedes that its preoccupation with bread-and-butter goals, though not mercenary in itself, is not much of a discipline or a guide to high ethical standards...

...Most astonishing of all, when Reuther got tired of waiting for Meany to retire or die and decided to lead his United Auto Workers (uaw) out of the federation, his first port of call was the union he had once excoriated, the still un-purged and unrepentant International Brotherhood of Teamsters...

...Delegate Parker: "I am very willing to do that...

...Here is part of the colloquy at the 1938 convention in San Francisco when a Chicago delegate rose to second the nomination of George McLane, the mob's choice: Delegate Parker: "I have worked in every millionaire's house in Chicago...