One Problem at a Time
BROOKS, THOMAS R.
One Problem at a Time Meany: The Unchallenged Strong Man of American Labor By Joseph C. Goulden Atheneum. 504 pp. $12.95. Reviewed by Thomas R. Brooks Author, "Toil and Trouble: A History of...
...We deal with one problem, or one set of problems, at a time...
...Appearances to the contrary, it was political necessity the need for a friendly Congress no matter who sat in the White Housethat forced Meany to keep his organization neutral...
...The liberals' expectation that Meany and the AFL-CIO would swallow the McGovern candidacy was based on a misunderstanding of his role and of the Federation's character...
...Every major piece of social legislation since 1955 bears an AFL-CIO stamp, in large measure because of the labor leader's strenuous efforts...
...We avoid preconceived notions, and we do not try to fit our program into some theoretical, all-embracing structure...
...It was widely thought, too, that Meany had acted out of pique against the Senator from South Dakota...
...However effective it may be, this kind of hard-nosed practicality is not often inspiring, or even fully understood...
...Whatever hopes Democrats have for victory in 1976 therefore appear to depend in good part on those forces within organized labor that are grouped around George Meany...
...Meany and Walter P. Reuthei merged the AFL and the CIO in 1955...
...An organization man, but with a difference, he started as a nuts-and-bolts business agent of a small but powerful plumbers' local, rode an anticorruption reform wave to become the secretary of the New York City Building Trades Council, and was made head of the New York State Federation of Labor after leading a crucial fight for state unemployment insurance...
...An investigative reporter and author of the best-selling expose The Superlawyers, Goulden gives a lively account of Meany's life and accomplishments...
...There are charges that Meany "wrecked cope...
...What strikes one most on reading Meany's life story is the man's astuteness...
...As Goulden points out, Meany is neither a crusader nor a visionary...
...The one word that best describes [the] day-to-day operation [of the labor movement] is 'practical,' " Meany once said...
...Yet despite his abhor-ence of Nixonomics, Meany refused to endorse the candidacy of Senator George McGovern four months later...
...Its unforlunate subtitle notwithstanding, Goulden's book sets many such false notions straight...
...But as the reader of Joseph C. Goulden's fine biography, Meany: The Unchallenged Strong Man of American Labor, soon discovers, the brusk AFL-CIO chieftain rarely allows his temper to determine union policy...
...Throughout the book, Gouiden is sympathetic to his subject, though not uncritical...
...In the guise of our present anti-inflationary policy, our people are being fleeced at the supermarket and they are being squeezed in their paycheck and they are bearing an undue share of the tax burden...
...It's my belief that a good union leader is one who is more forward-looking than the rank-and-file yet not so far ahead that he loses his following or fails to bring it along to support progressive measures...
...One doubts that, since the elections bore Meany out...
...Reportedly, McGovernites within the UAW are so angry that they will do anything to block the auto union's return to the AFL-CIO...
...Had he endorsed the Democrats' choice, thrown labor's resources behind McGovern (and there is no evidence the rank-and-file would have given very generously to its political arm, cope, for that purpose), Congress might well have gone to the Republicans...
...That much is clear from the reaction to its application in the Presidential election...
...The McGovern candidacy threatened the prolabor, liberal edge in Congress, and the maintenance of that margin is Meany's major responsibility...
...Meany also supported Mayor Fiorello La-Guardia over the opposition of such powerful New York labor figures as Joe "the Waxer" Ryan, boss of the waterfront...
...is this whole record the whole kit and kaboodle of it: Administration game plans, promises, phrases-with its dismal consequences for the people and the nation...
...Meany did not foresee in time the capture of the Democratic party by the elitist, so-called McGovern constituency...
...This is not to say he never errs, only that he makes fewer mistakes than the next fellow...
...And here, Goulden amply demonstrates, Meany earns high marks indeed...
...His militancy on the wage question as a member of the War Labor Board during World War II, his leadership against Communist domination of the international labor movement following the War, and his advocacy of AFL participation in politics made him a natural choice to succeed William Green in 1952...
...Once it occurred, he had little choice as organized labor's chief lobbyist...
...Meany made the hyphen an unbreakable bar...
...By and large, the unions that endorsed McGovern were unable to convince their members to go along...
...Meany purged the labor movement of racketeers, deepened its political involvement, and developed its social consciousness...
...Since the AFL had opposed unemployment insurance up until the 1931 convention, the New York victory in 1934 turned the tide, assuring the primacy of state-administered plans over those of individual employers...
...with a candidate labor can support, it seems likely that the voluntary contributions will once again roll in...
...When Reuther and the United Auto Workers walked out in 1968, no one of any consequence followed...
...Reviewed by Thomas R. Brooks Author, "Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor" Last spring, at his combative best, AFL-CIO President George Meany delivered a rollicking broadside against the Nixon Administration, telling a League for Industrial Democracy audience, "The issue facing the American people...
...He notes, for example, that Meany's gruffnesstraceable in part to a chronic, painful hip injury has contributed to "the tragedy of modern labor," its dissipation of "the mass sympathy it once commanded in the United States...
...Since the election, Meany has come to be seen variously as the embodiment of the American proletarian, as a blue-collar Wallacite or, worse, as a labor boss dictating the vote of otherwise class-conscious workers...
...As it happened, the labor turnout actually strengthened the liberal side in Congress...
...Born in the Bronx 78 years ago, the son of an Irish plumber, George Meanv rose through the ranks of what most observers consider the conservative wing of American labor, the craft-proud building trades...
...This decision distressed many liberals (including some within the labor movement) and seemed to confirm John Kenneth Galbraith's description of union leaders as "aged, contented, deeply somnabu-lent, geriatric," and "archaically hard-line on Communism...
...This was not accomplished without some cost to the labor movement...
...William Hutcheson of the Carpenters and Dan Tobin of the Teamsters picked Meany to be secretary-treasurer of the AFL in 1940, and he proceeded to convert that office into something of a power center within the Federation...
Vol. 56 • March 1973 • No. 5
