THE ROLE OF UNIONS
Young, Edwin
The Role of Unions A PHILOSOPHY OF LABOR, by Frank Tannenbaum. Alfred A. Knopf. 199 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by Edwin Young FRANK TANNENBAUM'S publisher does him a great disservice in advertising...
...Tannenbaum's contribution does not lie in the discovery of these materials, but rather in reminding people why there exists a labor movement and in raising some questions about the future...
...In his words: "The trade-union is the real alternative to the authoritarian state...
...More than twenty years ago, Selig Perlman in his A Theory of the Labor Movement covered much the same material with a great deal more illustrative material drawn from several countries...
...Polyani, in his The Great Transformation, describes the refusal of the workers crowded off the land by the enclosure acts to accept the "atomister" society which the economists so long proclaimed...
...As a true society it is concerned with the whole man, and embodies the possibilities of both the freedom and the security essential to human dignity...
...Labor will continue to take a larger share of responsibility for the well-being of the firm as labor's investment in jobs, pensions, seniority, and job-controls increases...
...It is only thus that a common identity may once again come to rule the lives of men and endow each one with rights and duties recognized by all...
...The corporation and the union will ultimately merge in common ownership and cease to be a house divided...
...He believes, with many others, that the trade union way is an alternative to the police state...
...Tannenbaum tells very well the story of the breakdown of the feudal manor and the medieval guild, the disorganization of society that ensued when the money wage was the only return to the disestablished worker, the revival of group activity around the job which became the modern trade union, and the role of the intellectual in trying to lead the trade unions down some "utopian" path...
...The Hammonds described well the destruction of custom and the rise of such institutions as trade unions to replace it...
...Reviewed by Edwin Young FRANK TANNENBAUM'S publisher does him a great disservice in advertising this book as "a pioneer work on the position of the labor union in modern society, offering the challenging concept of it as the great conservative force of our time...
...This story needs telling and retelling, but it is not a new story...
...The trade-union is our modern 'society,' the only true society that industrialism has fostered...
...Prof...
...This book should be read not as the new word, but as well-integrated thinking about the role of trade unions in our modern society...
Vol. 15 • April 1951 • No. 4
