A Brief for Union Democracy
BROOKS, THOMAS R.
A Brief for Union Democracy The Corrupt Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers By Joseph E. Finley Simon and Schuster. 315 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by Thomas R. Brooks Author, "Toil...
...I have never faltered or failed to present the cause or plead the case of the mine workers of this country," he once asserted, "not in the faltering tones of the mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled...
...Over the years, the operators ignored safety needs, including measures to eliminate black-lung disease, and in the '60s, rebel mine workers began building their opposition to Boyle's machine around health-and-safety issues...
...Most important, one never loses interest in the men who dig the coal -And workers, after all, are what this book and trade unionism are all about...
...In the '60s, though, one heard disquieting reports about the organization Lewis had molded-of mine workers unemployed, of benefit cutbacks for the sake of "retrenchment," of collusion between the UMW hierarchy and management, of greater concern among the leadership for the profits of a union-owned bank than for the membership, of virulent venality and, finally, of unanswered questions surrounding the 1969 murder of Jock Yab-lonski, who dared to challenge the position of Lewis' successor to the UMW presidency, Tony Boyle...
...With this goal in mind, Lewis opted for mechanization, a difficult choice that contributed to making Appa-lachia a synonym for poverty...
...Lewis reigned over the mine union for 40 years, and over the CIO for six...
...In the literature on union democracy, The Corrupt Kingdom takes a deserved place alongside such works as Jack Herling's fine portrait of the internal life of the steelworkers' union, Right to Challenge...
...It's better," he once declared, "to have half a million men working in the industry at good wages-high standards of living-Than it is to have a million men working in the industry in poverty and degradation...
...Yet Lewis' policies have not been an unmixed blessing for the miners he represented...
...Indeed, the most damning criticism of the leadership came from Tony Boyle himself: "The UMW will not abridge the tights of mine operators in running the mines...
...As a UMW vice president, Lewis took advantage of the alcoholism of his predecessor, Frank Hayes, to consolidate his power within the union...
...John L. Lewis had a quality of grandeur...
...The good which he did remains and will outlast the quarrels and conflicts which raged around him...
...His greatest achievements were concentrated into a period of little more than a decade, roughly from the mid-'30s to the late '40s, when he was in his late 50s and early 60s...
...Out of this endeavor came the ultimately successful reform campaign of Yab-lonski and Miller...
...at another, it is a brief for strengthening union members' rights...
...The potential for corruption, Finley suggests, was always there, built into the work of the miners...
...Hardman wrote those lines at the time of the late labor leader's retirement in 1960, when the "good" Lewis did was most evident...
...Soon after, he narrowly missed losing the post in what Finley terms "very likely the last free and open election held by the United Mine Workers" down to the court-ordered election last year, won by reform candidate Arnold Miller...
...At present, only 144,000 men mine coal...
...With automation, employment in the mines fell from some 416,000 in 1950 to 180,000 ten years later?and tonnage increased...
...For Lewis, the union c'est moi...
...Coal mining," he writes, "kills people-by the day, by the week, by the year...
...Equal space in union newspapers before elections and impartial ballot counts, for example, may become firmly established rights thanks to the courage of these men...
...We follow the judgment of the coal operators, right or wrong...
...Over 200,000 persons were aided in fiscal 1960 alone...
...My own feeling is that additional statutes are probably not the best way to improve the situation...
...As Hardman wryly remarked, "The leader of the coal miners taught free enterprisers the art of enterprising...
...He considered himself the chosen prophet of his people, leading them forward to economic justice, high wages and undreamed-of welfare and retirement benefits...
...It is a tough trade and it toughens the men in it...
...What had caused this once great union, which so many of us had admired, to descend to its apparent level of utter corruption and murder...
...Finley's grasp of UMW history is sure, and he guides the reader through the intricacies of a variety of judicial battles that in other hands would be bewildering...
...The negative things that he tried to do hurt him more than others in the long run...
...is the question Joseph E. Finley, a labor lawyer and journalist, tries to answer...
...Current Uws, Finley argues, do not adequately protect workers from their leaders...
...Presumably, the benefits from the Welfare and Retirement Fund were to cushion the blow, but Finley amply shows that this was not the case...
...Following Lewis the once-proud UMW entered a decline, and Finley details the self-aggrandizement, the plunder and the misuse of power that is the recent history of the mine workers...
...Hardman's evaluation of former United Mine Workers chief John L. Lewis: "If he was, on balance, a great leader and an extraordinary personality, he was also consumed by an extraordinary self-adulation...
...That policy proved to be Boyle's undoing...
...Speaking of Lewis but implying a wider application, Finley says, "his whole life had taught him that sheer force was the most certain way to triumph...
...the same could hardly be said for his successors...
...Thus, during the heroic era of their union's birth, miners countered employer violence with violence of their own and, later, they countenanced bloodshed for less noble purposes ?destroying opposition within the UMW, fighting nonunion mine owners (and miners) in the interest of the unionized corporate giants...
...Reviewed by Thomas R. Brooks Author, "Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor" Until recently, most people on the democratic Left, I think, would have agreed with J.B.S...
...The extent to which the area of legal concern can be effectively enlarged through the courts has been demonstrated by the Yablonski-Miller fight in the UMW and the effort to reform the National Maritime Union now being waged by James M. Morissey...
...At one level, Finley's book is excellent reportage...
...Dispensing revenues that came from a royalty tax on each ton of coal mined, it had paid out $79 million in pensions, $61 million for hospital and medical care, $3.7 million in funeral costs and widow and survivor benefits-Altogether almost $144 million...
...Such was his hold over the rank-and-file that even today UMW officials dare not attack the Grand Old Man...
...and when Hayes was compelled to resign in 1920, Lewis became president by appointment of the executive board...
...The UMW Welfare and Retirement Fund was then the greatest of them all...
...They were unable, he notes, to guarantee an honest election for the mine workers in 1969, yet he acknowledges that they did assure a new election when evidence of fraud was presented in the courts...
Vol. 56 • August 1973 • No. 16
