LABOR'S NEW LEADERS
McCulloch, Spencer R.
Labor's New Leaders By Spencer ft. MeCulloeh THE American labor movement is entering upon a new era. It is faced with the challenge of changing times and changing faces both from within and...
...Meany, like Reuther a pre-election foe of the Republican ticket, SPENCER R. McCULLOCH, roving correspondent for the St...
...Back of the titles aire new techniques, streamlined methods, different overall long range objectives as vital to the national economy as the old "nickel in the pay envelope" goal...
...James B. Carey, secretary-treasurer of the CIO and head of its Electrical Workers Union and other relatively youthful figures coming into their own as leaders at a crucial time...
...The union of the new era, its new young leaders agree, must sight at the stars—but keep its feet on the ground...
...At 51, his career is just taking shape...
...The AFL was condemned as being dominated by union heads who think first of their own cozy, life-time jobs...
...Reuther is regarded by some of the hard-boiled brothers as a "starry-eyed" idealist and a bumptious operator, but there is a healthy respect for his abilities and the showing he has made in bargaining against the giants of the auto industry...
...Consequently, its leaders must be business executives...
...It is the problem of unification, on which ride so many of labor's hopes for the future...
...Classes for workers and training facilities for union leadership have spread from union halls to college campuses and summer sessions...
...Housing, wage and price legislation, health measures, and scores of other proposals affecting the well-being of everyone are on the active list of union proposals...
...They are not policy-makers except in so far as their personal influence and union political strength may make them behind-the-scenes molders of policies which they proclaim publicly...
...Eleanor Roosevelt...
...The guaranteed annual wage and industry-wide bargaining have been proclaimed to be major targets in both the basic steel and auto industries...
...No union today can be governed successfully by the old type orator who called upon the rank and file to "hit the bricks...
...McDonald, a long time aide to Murray, has been overshadowed by the late head of the steelworkers, but he is a skilled negotiator...
...Like many leaders of both industry and labor...
...Beck is probably the most powerful individual within the AFL...
...They want to be as comfortable and as secure as possible...
...They are advancing, although in different ways, towards a common goal—to make organized labor an important social and political force...
...The present prospect is that peace may not come overnight but that a working agreement, especially in cases where rival unions are operating in the same field, may be worked out which may lead ultimately to organic unification if it stands the test of practice...
...There is also a definite shift in the emphasis and direction of collective bargaining objectives...
...Carey, of course, is widely known not only as secretary-treasurer of the CIO and head of the anti-Communist CIO electrical workers but because of his unremitting crusade for social justice and his fight against Communism and totalitarianism in any form...
...In their stead emerges Walter P. Reuther, 45-year-old new head of the CIO with his philosophy of unionism as a part of democratic citizenry in action the world over, and George Meany, realistic leader of the AFL, who has grown beyond the escalator of craft union politics and trade union horizons...
...Stalwarts of labor today, as aides to the Old Guard gradually fade away, include Dave Beck, successor to elderly Dan Tobin as head of the potent AFL Teamsters...
...At 41, he's just coming into his own as head of a large union, and in directing organization of the communications workers he accomplished a difficult and delicate task...
...He is out to grab all he can...
...At 49, he looks like a young man of distinction...
...John L. Lewis, who would like to bring about a united labor force if he could be both godfather and head, remarked recently upon the popular wish for unity...
...Expansion of the labor movement has posed new problems...
...Now only John L. Lewis, 72-year-old overlord of the independent United Mine Workers, remains of the national symbols of the Old Guard of labor...
...But they have an immediate problem before them which is pressing for solution...
...Son of a Seattle laundry worker, he rose from a laundry truck driver to a vice presidency of the teamsters between 1920 and 1940, organizing most of the West Coast in his stride...
...They are members of a departmentalized, specialized staff functioning under an executive who seldom addresses the rank and file sa\e in crucial times—as during the steel strike...
...He was not so successful during the CIO convention when he led his union in supporting Allan S. Haywood, CIO executive vice president and an old-line "trouble shooter," against Reuther for the presidency...
...David J. McDonald, acting head of the CIO Steelworkers since Murray's death...
...Domestic issues are implemented by many unions...
...He followed his father to the steel mills as a youth, took night courses at Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh...
...They are unwilling to surrender past gains and are working for new proposals...
...Not only is he head of its largest union, with a membership of 1,250,000, but he is out to double it...
...Now, as ever, the strike is labor's chief economic weapon but it is increasingly becoming an act of last resort, in fact as well as theory...
...He aided in formulating the policies of the protracted steel strike last summer...
...IV Present day union negotiators tote brief cases and meet management on equal terms...
...He is fully aware that a grip on transportation may stifle any industry...
...Carey has differed with Reuther on union matters but backed him at the convention and subscribes to his same general social philosophy...
...already is advancing labor's cause before big-wigs of the new Administration...
...No stranger would take McDonald for a labor leader...
...Before that he was Murray's secretary when Murray was' a vice president of the United Mine Workers under Lewis...
...Meany and Reuther, as heads of two autonomous federations, are primarily spokesmen...
...They must know management's story as well or better than their own...
...Joseph Beirne, of the CIO Communications Workers...
...Both Meany and Reuther have declared that they would sacrifice their offices, if necessary, for the sake of unity, but neither wants to make a material dent in his own unions...
...Participation in community life by union members reflects the increasing stabilization of labor and a growing social consciousness on the part of its members...
...Their rise to the position of titular heads and spokesmen for the two great segments of organized labor in this country coincided with the final weeks of a 20-year-old national Administration which encouraged labor in making unprecedented advances...
...He practices what he preaches...
...His union of 200,000 represents employes of companies affiliated with the American Telephone and Telegraph Co...
...It has to be because it deals with big business...
...Joe Beirne doesn't have an aggressive personality...
...Hayes has fought for tide-lands oil for the people of the nation, rather than the states, a national health program, a national primary system, and popular election of Presidents...
...Many end up by voting in NLRB elections for the "no union" ticket...
...In effect, he called a plague upon both the AFL and CIO...
...More teamwork may be expected first on social, political, and economic issues of importance to labor as a whole...
...Ill The rising tide of a desire for unity on the part of the rank and file has been patent for several years...
...It is faced with the challenge of changing times and changing faces both from within and without...
...Nothing is left to chance...
...The fundamentals of wages, hours, and working conditions remain, but in most industries they have attained such levels that they are not likely to be bargaining road blocks...
...For the first time in that industry, women workers, operators, and clerks massed on picket lines...
...When the word goes out that the brass hats have entered negotiations, it signalizes either the imminent signing of a contract or an impasse which may revert to the picket line...
...Labor's horizons now are the free world...
...Trained negotiators are backed by research experts, skilled in problems of marketing, production, and finance...
...His aggressive tactics have led to accusations that he has raided other AFL unions and even crossed picket lines in times of exigencies...
...It was composed of men who led sanguinary crusades for simple union recognition...
...II Meany has taken a wholesomely fresh approach...
...They are flanked by other union heads who make the labor movement tick with the times...
...Hayes, head of the 800,000-mem-ber machinists' union, is an advocate of labor unity...
...Their duties on the local level must conform to the over-all pattern...
...The AFL, partly as a defensive measure, has gone in for industrial unionism also, but on a smaller scale which should not create insurmountable jurisdictional difficulties...
...Workers today, mindful perhaps of the depression-ridden days of the early thirties, are figuring on staying on the job or at least working in the same industry...
...To Lewis, the CIO has lost its militancy, partly through inept leadership...
...He's a youthful prodigy of the labor movement who at 42 has lived up to his reputation...
...Committees from both organizations, ' which have been dormant for two years, will resume unification negotiations this month...
...He has even organized some fishermen on the promise that "they ride the waves" and filling station attendants, warehouse employes, and anyone else remotely connected with distribution...
...He has been secretary-treasurer of the steelworkers, second largest CIO union, since its inception in 1936...
...The "fringe benefits" of yore, once used as conversational bargaining points, have become'main objectives...
...Modern labor is big business, not in the sense of profits, although some unions deal in millions, but in method...
...Well-tailored, of trim physique, he puffs ruminatively on a pipe...
...Labor today wants pensions, job security, medical care, and other stabilizing measures which lead to future security...
...At 58, he is signing up everything that traverses the highways...
...Reuther, as president of the United Automobile Workers, largest union in the country, is no stranger to the picket line, yet he has achieved industrial peace in the traditionally hard-bitten automotive industry...
...Security is a big point in modern bargaining...
...His first official act was to revive negotiations for unification, not through the negative approach of the elderly Green, who implored the CIO, like the prodigal son, to "come back to the House of Labor" but on the basis of a meeting of equals...
...But McDonald, like Haywood, pledged support to the Reuther administration once the dynamic head of the UAW had captured the presidency against powerful opposition...
...heads of some rival unions view his rise with alarm...
...From an organizational standpoint alone such rivalry is dangerously costly, as prospective recruits in unorganized areas are pulled hither and yon by unions struggling to enroll them...
...Fear has been expressed by responsible union leaders that the new generation of wage earner who joins a union automatically, with no conception of the struggle that made it possible, may lose sight of the crusading spirit which prevents a union from existing in a vacuum...
...He looks beyond the shop, takes a stand on national issues...
...Although associates have urged him to bring about withdrawal from the AFL because of dissatisfaction with the AFL Executive Council's handling of a long standing jurisdictional dispute with the carpenters, he has refused to do so, saying that the principle of unity comes first...
...Beck is a man to watch...
...Meany's attitude reflects official recognition of an established fact, long evident to the rank and file of both organizations, that the CIO has established itself in mass industry to such an extent that only in relatively minor cases does it endanger the actual strength of the crafts predominantly reflected in the make-up of the AFL...
...Like Reuther he's a protege of Mrs...
...Often union heads and corporation presidents do not meet until their staffs have reached a basis for discussion requiring action by the principals...
...An epoch ended with the recent deaths of two elder statesmen of labor, Philip Murray, diplomatic head of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and William Green, long-time president of the craft-conscious American Federation of Labor...
...Each has demonstrated progres-siveness, imagination, and courage, although they differ in individual traits and personal philosophies...
...Louis Post' Dispatch, has covered most of the major developments in the field of organized labor in recent years for that distinguished daily...
...They Jived, through turbulent times of "yellow dog" contracts and anti-labor injunctions, to see collective bargaining linked with job security and social benefits which still are part of a new frontier of labor...
...Beirne, who once was a New Jersey telephone worker, has made a sizable dent in the white collar field...
...But the physical change in the face of labor, as marked by new leadership, is but one component of a new era in industrial relations...
...Even most convention delegates today are usually local union heads or other salaried union officials...
...Policies, which often have their genesis in the plants, are formulated and directed from the top...
...The "little red head," as he is still called, is never caught napping...
...A realization has been manifested that unions should not waste their energies and resources fighting one another when the essential bat-tleline, between capital and labor, remains unchanged...
...Admittedly it is a difficult one, but clearly not nearly so insoluble as certain richly entrenched labor leaders have maintained during the years of costly conflict between labor's two great houses...
...Neither shows the slightest disposition to retreat to a defensive position regardless of what the temper of the new Administration in Washington turns out to be...
...That type of leadership is customarily assigned to organizers...
...Beck came up from the bottom...
...Al J. Hayes, of the growing AFL Machinists...
Vol. 17 • February 1953 • No. 2
