Labor's Past as Future

...One would have difficulty tolerating these indignities unless the purgatory of the immediate present were a prelude to a better world...

...It also defines labor's overall role through its perception of what workers can accomplish once they understand collective strength and individual worth...

...In certain countries prostitutes and beggars have their unions...

...Their pay was too good...

...In short, however successful and efficient it might have become, it would hardly be worth a second look, let alone a serious book...

...Attempts to organize the various service folk in the late 1940s and 1950s seemed to confirm the judgment that this could not be done...

...Ideologically motivated leaders spared District Council 37 this fate...

...The vision further inspires attempts to win political power, not merely for its own sake, but to promote the social order to come...

...Zander appointed Wurf, and Wurf ousted Zander...

...Man, the social animal, senses that he is stronger united than alone...

...The internal battles were ugly, sometimes bestial...

...A new class emerged and, in time, formed "combinations...

...Socialists are not, of course, the only ideologues who have tried to spread their message on the factory floor...

...The pundits, as is their wont, predicted the end of the American labor movement...

...But one force was universal, whatever the details of the separate struggles: the unstated yet undeniable uprising of a class...

...To bring order into the chaos they will have to start de novo...

...And they do...

...Indeed, when I wrote my book entitled The Labor Revolution in the mid-60s and nevertheless argued that the "new labor force" would generate a "new labor movement," several condescending reviewers dismissed me as an unrealistic old romantic prone to see fire where there was not even a puff of smoke...

...Following World War II the U.S...

...Each group has had its prophets (early dreamers), its preachers (fiery agitators) and its bishops (administrators and autocrats...

...At the moment our economy is again in transition, as it was at the turn of the century and at the close of the two World Wars...

...Since, as we have seen, such social movements emerge spontaneously, with or without leaders to promote or simply impose an ideology, do leaders make a difference...

...Arnold Zander, afscme's first president, felt close to socialist attitudes, not uncommon in Wisconsin, where he was headquartered...

...Nor can its metamorphosis be explained by mere growth...

...Searching for someone capable of breathing a bit of divine afflatus into his New York affiliate, he sought the advice of Bill Becker, the old Socialist Party's labor secretary...

...It is a lesson out of the past, many pasts, with meaning for the future...

...This restructuring process, like its predecessors, will give rise to new classes lacking institutional traditions, ready-made forms to deal with their anguish or aspirations, or established chiefs...

...District Council 37 had two such leaders: Jerry Wurf, a socialist enfant terrible who matured into a firebrand, and Gotbaum, a pea out of the same pod, who took over in New York when Wurf moved up to afscme's presidency...

...In their sermon the Bellushes preach the desirability of a socialist commitment for a union leader...

...Much more explicit is their evidence that even idealists find it almost impossible to escape the weaknesses of all flesh: personal ambition, vanity, jealousy...

...The Bellushes' history lesson describes the unionization of one of our burgeoning new classes—the rank and file in private and public service institutions —and its implications...

...The American Federation of Teachers is another biggie, and would certainly be the biggest were it ever to conclude a merger with its "unaffiliated" counterpart, the National Education Association...

...By ably telling the story of one ideologue, the Bellushes indirectly clarify the role of the entire species...

...That is the big history lesson—the innate, instinctive impulse of the multitudes to act in common if they perceive a common cause...

...The second largest is the Service Employees International Union, whose very name reflects the essential makeup of its membership, afscme is way up there near the top...

...Back in the 1940s it was a loose federation of little locals going about their daily chores of protecting dues-payers...

...America's laboring people have demonstrated this truth repeatedly...

...Soon the Great Depression struck, decimating the most exclusive craft societies...

...Wurf later chose Got-baum...

...he, on his part, respects and trusts the couple so completely that he did not read the manuscript before publication...

...Their attitudes were individualistic to a degree unknown among the horny-handed sons and daughters of toil...

...As the largely white collar service sector grew and its blue collar counterpart shrunk, at least relatively, many pundits suggested that in a few years the labor movement would be a museum piece...

...Postwar efforts to organize them were fruitless...

...they were drifters, immigrants lacking the personal and occupational pride of the Americanized...

...delegation to the United Nations have them...

...In addition, they were seen as congenital Milquetoasts, the sort who would rather be struck dead than strike...

...professional basketball and baseball players, screen actors, Internal Revenue agents, and employees of the U.S...

...Union Power and New York is a love affair, a sermon and a history lesson...

...They were upwardly aspiring, mobile, raised in an age of affluence...

...Service workers now outnumbered those producing goods, because affluent consumers could at last afford to purchase amenities called " services" as well as the tangible, and the welfare state had created a huge government bureaucracy...

...The Catholic Church has produced armies of dedicated unionists, ideological in their own fashion, as have the Communists, the anarchists, the syndicalists, and the feminists...

...And if history is any kind of guide, they will ultimately organize...

...What was true in the service economy in general was said to be particularly true of public employees...

...In the future, there will be new "isms," and they too will play a disproportionately powerful part in fledgling labor agitation, because ideology imparts direction to motion and gives coherence to separate, self-absorbed locals...

...The question was whether the service people, especially the civil servants, would organize...

...Ideology, itseems, can't get rid of the id...

...Gotbaum simply let these activist academics do their thing, although he must have known from their lifelong record that they would not hesitate to criticize their "hero...

...They show District Council 37 did not always have the character—the verve, the social presence, the political savvy, the educational aspirations, the internal vitality, the community recognition—it has enjoyed in recent times...

...Today, the millions "in service" are the cutting edge of labor in the United States...

...They did—by trade, occupation or shop—in each case stressing issues outsiders considered petty...

...Before the first unions, some 200 years ago, it was assumed that journeymen would eventually rise to be masters and that consequently a struggle between the two was impossible...

...Wittingly or unwittingly, their authorized biography of Victor Gotbaum—head of District 37, the New York arm of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (afscme)—chronicles a significant development for labor as a whole: the unionization of service workers...

...They enjoyed Civil Service status that provided job security, the prestige of a uniform or a title, inmanyinstances, and predictable pay increments...

...There is a moral in all of this, and it is less about unions than human beings: Whenever social groups—priests in antiquity, medieval scholars, full-time warriors (called nobles), artisans, physicians, bankers, carpenters, or civil servants, to name a few—recognize their potential collective power they will assert their collective presence...

...Actually, there is reason to believe that between now and the year 2000 it will undergo changes as profound as those caused by the Industrial Revolution...

...Here ideology, the adrenaline of secular chili-asm, stirs the juices...

...Leading a union in its early stages is a thankless task, full of intense effort, physical hardship, financial deprivation, and often bodily danger...

...Becker recommended Wurf...

...An ideology serves a double purpose: It provides energy and vision...

...and they hated members of rival ethnic groups more than they hated the boss...

...Had timeservers of this sort continued to run the show, afscme's New York branch might today be big, rich and powerful, but it would also be identical to innumerable cliques that protect the tribal interests of their clans...

...Even after the skilled craftsman's propensity to organize had become obvious, other workers were still thought to be incapable of imitating his example: They could easily be replaced...

...Then came the revival of the economy and of the movement in the late '30s...

...After all, the reasoning went, white collar workers had long resisted its blandishments...

...Moreover, despite the Bellushes' focus on the past and on one district, their factually rich study can tell us a good deal about the labor movement's future...

...Suddenly the semiskilled and unskilled rose: Legions of steel, auto, rubber, chemical, and clothing hands came to labor through the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations...

...Both personally and ideologically the writers are much taken with their subject...

...Wurf and Gotbaum saw in organized labor an instrument to reshape the social order, and acted accordingly...

...Reviewed by Gus Tyler Assistant President, International Ladies' Garment Workers Union On occasion, authors achieve more than they set out to achieve...

...economy changed once more...

...As the handicraft system gave way to modern industry, the expectation went by the boards...

...The political philosophies of these dedicated souls propelled the district into spheres that went far beyond wages and hours, strikes and contracts...

...Their world would therefore be a nonunion world...

...Wurf appointed Gotbaum, andGot-baum tried to oust Wurf...

...The members were chiefly interested in keeping their jobs, and so too were the leaders...

...Thus a union becomes a school, a training ground, a tumultuous and exciting institution...

...its present personality reflects a very special kind of direction...

...The Bellushes' work is well worth reading for its implicit resolution of this longstanding issue alone...

...This estate of the realm made its dramatic debut on the stage of our national consciousness in 1947, when for the first time the number of Americans dispensing services surpassed the number making goods...

...The AFL-CIO's largest affiliate is the United Food and Commercial Workers, embracing primarily the retail trades...

...Among "brothers," too, power plays satanic games...

...While the demands of World War I greatly increased the number of laborers engaged in mass manufacture, the logic seemed to be supported by reality...

...That may be the case with Jewel and Bernard Bel-lush...

...In the U.S...