WHAT LABOR NEEDS
EBY, KERMIT
WHAT LABOR NEEDS by KERMIT EBY Before me, as I write, are two piles of sources. One contains resolutions concerning ethical practices, or lack thereof, of the AFL-CIO and many of its great...
...In the Auto Workers the leadership is more enlightened, but the distance is as great and the apathy as intense...
...So far there has been little or no sustained effort to involve the rank and file in the crusade...
...Labor must, if it would go forward, move with the community and not against it...
...They point with pride to the purge of Communism in 1949, affirm their faith in democracy, and ask, by inference, a continued faith in their integrity...
...The records of action on resolutions are forthright, particularly in the AFL-CIO...
...the members as my members...
...Frankly, I do not believe union democracy is possible unless men feel free to introduce controversy...
...Because of this stress on loyalty, and the supersensitivity of the leaders, there can be no equal exchange between men nor little honest criticism...
...Self-per-perpetuation is the aim instead of preparation of men to succeed to power and take over responsibility...
...Just listen to this, from the mouths of leaders of the Steel Workers in Chicago (the same men who speak so eloquently of democracy) as they denounce the followers of Don Rar-ick, who had the temerity to challenge incumbent leadership and organize a Dues Protest Committee which polled almost a third of the Steel worker vote in a recent election: First Joseph Germano, regional director: "The Dues Protest Committee is a group of dissidents which numbers amongst its membership nearly all the Communists and Trotskyites that have been well known to the union...
...It has long been my thesis that the tragedy of the labor movement has been its corruption by the mores of the world it once challenged...
...it has broader ramifications than I realized...
...Union members must be brought into involvement of public issues...
...The union is not merely its officers...
...And more than once, I have heard top leaders express their doubt about rank and file willingness to take a moral position: "We," the top brass infer, "are a few pure St...
...Recently, during a discussion of inflation, a high ranking officer of the Steel Workers asked my opinion of their policies...
...The real heart of my argument rests on the conviction that there can be no real education in a voluntary organization until there is a frank appraisal of power and power relationships in the immediate area where power operates and power impinges...
...I would feel more hopeful if a bit more mea culpa was in the protest of those who write labor's resolutions, a bit more willingness to admit a common guilt...
...As a yardstick I would attempt to relate the salaries of officers to those who pay dues...
...Now, one has to be more than a bit stuffy to take oneself so seriously as to imply that every third steel worker is a divisionist, or a stooge, or a traitor...
...2—Its ostentatious accommodations, in Washington and other cities where union headquarters are located...
...Recognizing men's unwillingness to give up power, and organizational tendencies to self-perpetuation, I would invite the labor movement to amend its constitutions to place limitations on the length of officers' tenure...
...he doesn't run off at the mouth and want to reform the world...
...I would also place limitations on salaries and emoluments...
...It assumes that educators make available to the workers all of the facts, even those contrary to the line...
...Then the educators went to work to indoctrinate the rank and file and succeeded...
...When unions grow so large, as the Steel Workers, Auto Workers, and others have, when they have a million or more members and equally great resources, it is hard for the "decisionmakers" to keep in touch with those whose decisions they control...
...The merry-go-round of price and wage increases must stop...
...It is Meany and Reuther and their ethical practices committee waging a war on Beck and Hoffa...
...The team is important, but the truth as men see it is more important...
...Wherever and whenever possible, human values in the industrial processes should be put first...
...To begin, I would invite all unions to resolve to let the power of decision return to the people...
...The time has come when the productivity increases you talk about must be reflected in reduced prices to consumers...
...But that is not education, it's indoctrination...
...Have they not, more than once, resolved that labor and the people who make it up are not commodities, but real flesh and blood persons...
...The labor movement as a minority movement grew and prospered with its highest value expressed in loyalty for those in the common cause...
...3—The quality of the accommodations demanded by its representatives at conventions and meetings: hotels on the boardwalk in Atlantic City...
...In order to make possible honest evaluation, I would begin with freedom in the movement itself...
...5—Expense accounts and the use of money as a tool to influence policy...
...7—A tendency of union officials to look at the union as my union...
...They are poor conversationalists...
...In the first place there needs to be a restoration of the fraternity on which the labor movement was built...
...Yet the movement does respond to external criticism—thus it was in the case of corruption...
...Many labor spokesmen are as humorless as the most concerned Communists who insist that it is freedom for the slate to be determined by the elite and voted for or against by the members...
...They take themselves too seriously...
...Education, from my point of view, means the willingness to begin with an open end instead of a fixed agenda...
...Universally the plaint is: members do not come to the meetings...
...Perhaps if all of us thought more of "power with" and less of "power over," we would be less inclined to speak of "my" union or of the Steel Workers as the hierarchy at 1500 Commonwealth...
...And the only organizations which can be trusted are those which have built in them, either by precedent or constitutional provision, the machinery for the orderly transfer of power...
...For a long time I have had a continuing argument with a labor publicist who says I have no right to demand a higher morality of labor leaders than I do of any other members of the American economic community...
...6—The development of a "pork chopper" mentality—the distance between those who live on dues and those who pay them...
...Because of this affirmation I have a tendency to be disturbed when a labor leader speaks about "my" union or even of the "rank and file...
...It just doesn't make sense to study power relationships in the other man's back yard while utterly ignoring your own...
...To counteract this, I would resolve to initiate all policy from below, from shop and local groups, and to bring into these discussions every conflicting view and then seek synthesis...
...The main trouble of so many labor leaders I have known is their lack of a sense of humor...
...The power structures are rigged, and there is no ideology unless it is an emphasis on more—more pay and more security...
...The examples are many and obvious in union practices: I—Its drive toward salaries of union officers comparable to those of management...
...There is an evidence of good faith too on the part of the AFL-CIO in cooperating with the McClellan Committee...
...Not even Walter Reuther's watch-dog committee of prominent citizens is good enough...
...KERMIT EBY, professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago, long served in the labor movement...
...There is no real hope for reform beyond resolution until the union structure is permeated with new men and a new philosophy...
...They decry corruption and emphasize the long historical criticisms of the movement toward corruption in business and government...
...Practically, the problem is the concept of indispensability which is so prevalent in the movement...
...Today, there are many resolutions and much soul-searching in the labor movement...
...It seems to me that the chief problem of the AFL-CIO is its rigidity resulting from the middle-age of its leaders, the young radicals of the Thirties...
...There is much concern in the labor movement because of the discrepancy in McDonald's $50,000 per year and the $100,000 or $150,000 of a U.S...
...Perhaps because they came to power in the movement by much speaking, they have become used to their own voices...
...Really, why should they...
...For example, the men who determine the top policy of the Auto Workers three years ago stressed the annual wage which was ratified by the convention...
...The resolutions read much the same, as if they had been drawn up by the same committee or the same lawyer...
...In the power structure loyalty is an important virtue in times of crisis, in wartime or strike, but it can muzzle criticism...
...President, what do you really think of the dues-payers who man the assembly lines...
...All of this is good, but not good enough...
...to make possible selection of candidates by petition...
...It took moral courage to expel ten to twelve per cent of an organization's duespaying membership, which the Teamsters represented...
...If it were possible, I would revise the order of priority and begin with soul-searching, invite a sense of humor, the tolerance of historical criticism, the reevaluation of the loyalty concept, the free flow of information, the encouragement of dissent, the self-limitation of power, and the increase of union and public responsibility...
...to prohibit employees of the unions as convention delegates, permitting only the so-called "rank and file," the members, to represent themselves...
...If I could influence the labor movement, there would be fewer resolutions and more personal and institutional introspection...
...One contains resolutions concerning ethical practices, or lack thereof, of the AFL-CIO and many of its great member unions, such as Steel, Auto Workers, and Machinists...
...In 1934 he organized the first Teachers' Union in Ann Arbor, helped organize the Auto Workers in 1935-1936 and served as their first legislative representative in Lansing, was executive secretary of the Chicago Teachers' Union for five years, and from 1945 to 1948 served as director of education and research for the CIO...
...In essence, I am saying that the only men who can be trusted with power are those who are willing to give it up...
...In the other pile is the record of the AFL-CIO's attempts to implement its resolutions...
...Where to begin...
...Charles Smith of the same rank declared: "Dirty rotten traitors are trying to destroy our union from within...
...The guilty leaders and unions are confronted with their guilt, threatened, and expelled...
...As I have suggested, resolutions are not enough...
...Georges fighting corruption below us and all around us...
...Fundamentally, then, I conclude with the thesis that the unions are failing at the point of the strongest claim for their existence: respect for human dignity...
...There is little or no self-criticism, and for all practical purposes no historical criticism in the movement, no letters to the editor, or talk back to officers...
...It would be more relevant if the concern were expressed for the spread between the $50,000 of McDonald and the $5,000 of the dues payers who provide it...
...Al Whitehouse, another district director, said: "Our greatest enemies are the company stooges within our ranks...
...There is an undertone of hurt pride and a bit of arrogance in more than one of the resolutions, "for after all," they claim, "we are the defenders of the weak, the protectors of democracy, the enemies of reaction...
...Dave Beck's greatest sin was not pilfering...
...Since then, I have thought a great deal about my reply...
...If the labor movement had a sense of humor or was self-critical, it might ask why it builds its political strategy on a two-party system and takes advantage of the factions within a single party—and at the same time is everlastingly afraid of factions or parties in its own ranks...
...Underlying their action is a declaration that the guilty should be punished...
...To restore this, unions in this age need broader goals than merely good jobs and bread-and-butter demands...
...As I have said, the efforts to purge the corrupt have been top level efforts...
...This willingness must rest on the leaders' part in the labor movement as seen in their constant affirmation and dedication to their fellow men...
...To me the important question is: "Mr...
...The day is past when labor can find its defense as a persecuted minority...
...Are they statistics, names on cards, or men with the same dignity as yourself and the same capacity for decision...
...And I always reply to him, "Indeed, I do"—just as I demand a higher morality of churchmen who profess dedication to more than secular values...
...I replied: "They are too inbred...
...More than once I have pointed out that the Dave Beck who fell so far was once the darling of the business community, and more than once I have been told by members of the business community of Detroit: "You can do business with Hoffa...
...Unions today are great bodies, powerful organizations with no souls...
...Today, the distances between officers and members disturb me almost as much as the corruption...
...The officers are part of a bureaucracy in the same manner as the officers of a giant corporation are a part of a power structure...
...4—The Miami habit—going South for winter convention vacations...
...to incorporate in the election provisions the necessity for contested elections...
...in other words, they are poor listeners...
...Steel executive...
...There is utterly no hope, if the incumbent power structure attacks opposition as disloyal...
...The time has passed when great organizations dare put the private welfare of themselves and members first...
...it was arrogance, contempt for those from whom he sprang...
...As in all tight power structures, there is no one to say "Nuts" to officer bombast, not even the court fool who in times past could both regale and instruct the king...
...Underlying my own position is the affirmation that the unions must ask why they are the guilty...
...Both resolution and watch-dog committees begin with the wrong assumptions...
Vol. 22 • April 1958 • No. 4
