AFL/CIO: A HOUSE DIVIDED

...On the other hand, when Maurice Hutche-son, president of the large Carpenters' union, was convicted by Indiana courts a year ago for irregularities relating to certain land deals in that state, Meany refused to take "hurried" action...

...They wanted for their unions the right to picket employers that used subcontractors and outside labor in industrial plants...

...and from the insecurity of unemployment by supplemental unemployment pay...

...Some unionists are responding to this malaise, at least in part, thus driving deeper wedges in leadership ranks...

...Where yesterday it was on a much looser basis and international unions of rival organizations sometimes were able to resolve their differences, today each incident is merely part of a bigger war between aggregates of unions...

...The proportion of engineers, technicians, and supervisors is much greater than in a non-automated plant...

...But the centers of power will still revolve around the dynamic redhead of the auto union, Walter Reuther, and the equally dynamic Jimmy Hoffa...

...Racketeering under these circumstances becomes more difficult...

...Such are the overt disagreements in the house of labor...

...When the plant becomes automated, the number of employes drops to 1,000 or 2,000...

...But Hoffa has shown an ability to innovate...

...The traditional union solution to this problem would be to lobby for a shorter work week...

...Today the two men are in stronger positions than they were five years ago...

...None of these high goals has been realized...

...Yet rivalry has become even more bitter than when the two federations were independent and often opposed each other...

...Its strike weapon is blunted, and its political power has not grown appreciably, despite the Kennedy victory...

...In many places—Chicago, for instance—it is hard to tell that the Teamsters are no longer in the federation...

...Both sides now seem intent on going their own ways, despite their formal unity...

...Walter Reuther has taken a decided turn to the left...

...It was primarily on his initiative, and that of Frank Rosen-blum of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, that the American Friends Service Committee was able to mobilize 275 secondary union leaders from more than fifty unions in twelve states for a recent "peace, jobs, freedom" conference...

...A reduction to thirty-six hours, with forty hours pay, for instance, would absorb the jobless...

...Privately the CIO men rankle over the inconsistency of the Meany group on the matter of "corruption...

...There are four major forces pulling the bricks apart...

...In the intervening five years he has mended his fences to some extent with the steel organization and in addition has picked up some new allies...

...With Hoffa's hands now freed it is possible that the next series of internal disputes in the AFL-CIO may lead to an important exodus in his direction, and there is at least a chance that the Teamsters may soon form the central core of a new federation of labor...

...Repairs, maintenance, and improvement can be temporarily postponed...

...Furthermore, in a pinch, the machinery can operate almost on its own for fairly long periods...

...Auto plants today could easily turn out ten million cars in a year, but they are working at the rate of only 5.5 million, or fewer...

...it has grown from 1.5 million to 1.7 million...

...If the AFL-CIO is to hang together at all it will have to be around men like Al Hayes of the Machinists or George Harrison of the Railway Clerks...

...Meany is cool to the demand of venerable Philip Randolph of the Sleeping Car Porters for a code of fair racial practices...

...In Britain or Germany the unions would achieve such goals through legislation introduced by their allies in parliament...

...And the UAW, which begins new negotiations this summer, is in the least favorable situation of the postwar period to win this demand through collective bargaining...

...The centrifugal forces within the house of labor stem mostly from this circumstance...

...The Teamsters' is the only large union that gained membership in the intervening period...

...So bitter are the feelings between the two "united" segments of labor that Reuther felt constrained in April to call together what amounted to a private caucus...

...In December 1955...

...The official leadership may be content to continue along old lines, but there is an uneasy feeling in the ranks...

...replace those lost through technological and cyclical unemployment...

...Within a year it is expected that Meany will retire...

...Before a House labor subcommittee in April, the craft unionists lobbied for a change in the Taft-Hartley Act which would allow them to picket multi-employer construction sites—now considered a secondary boycott...

...During the lettuce strike in California's Imperial Valley early this year the united federation failed to mobilize genuine support for the strikers because their jurisdiction was being contested between the former AFL Meat Cutters and CIO Packinghouse Workers who had organized the walkout...

...He resents their peculiar brand of anti-Communism and is himself more closely allied to the policies of Americans for Democratic Action and the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy...

...After its convention there will undoubtedly be a large increase of staff and many new organizational drives...

...Labor's legions are divided into two groups: those with primaiy economic power and those with secondary power...

...Its ability to achieve both economic and social goals is seriously curtailed...

...It is altogether possible that both the Hoffa and Reuther wings will be competing for the allegiance of American workers in new and, as yet, undefined approaches...

...By 1960 enthusiasm had waned and action against Hutcheson would have consolidated former AFL unions, already restless, for a possible break...

...They depend on help from fellow-unionists...

...This latter circumstance, however, probably will be altered in July when Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters' Union holds its first convention since the lifting of a court-imposed moni-torship...

...Meany is for more and more arms and a foreign policy much further to the right...

...This development is part of an ever-widening, increasingly unresolved conflict...

...There may be an increase in service jobs, but manufacturing jobs have declined...

...The inability of the movement to continue gaining social objectives through economic bargaining...

...What holds the segments together is a universal fear of a legislative offensive if labor divides, and the simple organizational reality that, at least until now, there has been no other place to go...

...This show of strength by Hoffa is in itself a testament to AFL-CIO weakness...

...The "tough plumber," George Meany, who was supposed to hold the AFL-CIO together has been inadequate for the task...

...Under the guiding hand of Walter Reuther, American unions have perfected a novel technique...

...Part of the change, it is true, is because the Teamsters were expelled when the AFL-CIO was still riding the crest of unity enthusiasm...

...Prior to the next union negotiations in 1962 the industry can work one year at full capacity and warehouse enough steel to provide for perhaps twenty-two or twenty-four months of demand...

...Steel last year operated at only a little more than half of its capacity...

...A fifteen-man committee selected by this caucus later met with Meany, and although an official communique played down their differences, the AFL-CIO president in an interview with the New York Times referred to one of Reuther's statements as an "absolute lie...

...There are persistent reports that Hoffa intends to modify his constitution (or work out some other formula) to provide a haven for national unions which want to secede from the AFL-CIO...

...When the Teamsters' Union was expelled three years ago George "Meany and Walter Reuther evidently felt that it would be isolated and weakened as a result...

...Put simply, the true crisis of the labor movement stems from two major developments: f The decline of the strike weapon as an effective means of gaining labor's objectives...

...Despite a number of meetings to find a common ground, the effort failed...

...The Teamsters' Union, though outside AFL-CIO ranks, has intensified the problem...

...It has been too weakened by membership losses and the normal demoralization that follows a bout of severe unemployment...

...part of it stemmed from the inability to organize enough new members to SIDNEY LENS it a Chicago labor leader who ha» written widely on current af-fain for a number of publications, including the Yale Review, Commonweal, The Nation and The New Republic...

...from the insecurity of old age by his supplemental pensions...

...There are only a few in each establishment and almost all are unskilled...

...Social demands are increasingly at the forefront of union objectives...

...Unless the truck drivers refuse to haul produce in and out, or the whole labor movement puts up effective picket lines to prevent entry by strike-breakers, the efforts of these workers are usually futile...

...Yet the industrial unionists, whose moral tone is generally higher than that of its business unionist rivals, could hardly be content with this double standard...

...When the industrial union department held a legislative conference in March, Meany failed to appear, even though he had been listed as a speaker for many weeks...

...Quill has offered shelter to the airline stewardesses, who once had a tenuous affiliation with the Pilots' union...

...A plant of 5,000 workers, for instance, may have 100 to 300 supervisors...

...When the CIO split from the AFL in 1935, it grew quickly from one million to four million members...

...Will Hoffa become a focal point for the bread-and-butter unionists and Reuther for the socially-conscious unionists...

...Third, and most important, is the basic weakening of labor's principal weapon, the strike, and the inability to compensate for this through effective social action...

...He has rejected the concept of military deterrence entirely and has lectured all over the country on the urgent need for peace...

...Under any circumstances the mortar that holds the AFL-CIO together is seriously in need of tuckpointing...

...Wage increases were so far down the list they were almost overlooked...

...Reuther is much more sympathetic, even though Randolph represents a former AFL union...

...Agricultural laborers or retail clerks, for example, can easily be replaced by non-strikers...

...by contrast, the merged organization in its first five and one-half years has declined by three million...

...Among themselves these fourteen organizations resolve jurisdictional strife quickly, but in relation to the industrial unions they continue a long and costly conflict...

...The strikers took a licking...

...Thus the union, if it fails to reach an agreement, would face the prospect of striking eight, ten, or twelve months before the corporations even began to be hurt...

...this is hardly adequate to continue production...

...Reuther might not have merged the CIO with the AFL if it had not been for the pressures of the steel union, which threatened to secede unless such action were taken...

...It is far from perfect, but it is better than some AFL organizations never stigmatized by Congress...

...George Meany and his AFL friends insist that the airline girls must belong to the Pilots' union, a former AFL organization...

...And it not only has oral understandings with more than a dozen AFL-CIO affiliates, but strong working relations with official unions in scores of cities...

...Even more threatening is the relative overcapacity of our major industries...

...Take the factory with 5,000 workers...

...And in doing so they will no doubt win many allies who look to the Teamsters for the power that can supplement their own efforts...

...Thus Reuther was able to protect his union members from some of the evils of inflation by winning a cost-of-living escalator clause in his contracts: whenever prices go up, the auto workers get a raise...

...What the members sought were guarantees against automation, more medical insurance, a shorter work week, and the like...

...In international affairs he is speaking out more forthrightly— on the general position of SANE— than in recent years...

...Emil Mazey, secretary-treasurer of the UAW and a maverick in his own right, has gone further...

...A former AFL Electrical union refused to work on a project which employed members of the former CIO Communication workers...

...Just the opposite has happened...

...It is well known, for instance, that Meany was less than lukewarm over the appointment of former CIO attorney Arthur J. Goldberg as Secretary of Labor...

...All of the mass production unions today face a similar prospect...

...This is the measure of labor's frustration...

...The industrial unionists then notified the Building Trades' organizations that they would not support this proposal any more unless it were coupled with provisions that lightened the secondary boycott load for them as well...

...The merged federation's original fifteen million membership today is down to twelve million...

...More than any other union in the country the Teamsters give the impression of being ready to "move...

...The auto and steel unions have lost 200,000 to 300,000 members each, and most of these jobs are gone forever...

...From the kind of friends each has now, it would seem that way...

...unity was conceived as a means of organizing many millions of the unorganized, ending inter-union jurisdictional fights, and greatly enhancing labor's political power...

...Behind them, however, lurk basic problems that far transcend the disputes among personalities...

...Unemployment is at its postwar peak and will remain at five or six per cent even when the economy levels out...

...The Teamsters' magazine in its May issue boasted that this pact had "resulted in approximately $30 million" worth of additional jobs for the craft unions...

...The strike was defeated...

...All attempts to penetrate new fields—retail, office, farm, professional—and to expand in the South, have failed...

...Friction among its top leaders is so intense that for all practical purposes the hyphenated federation is functioning as two organizations...

...Typical is the incident that occurred in Chicago recently...

...The house is being shaken, and there are bound to be new alignments in the labor movement...

...And, finally, there is an uneasy groping by some leaders for new ways and new strategies...

...They have gained social objectives at the collective bargaining table rather than through political action...

...There is no quick replacement, and the supervisory staff cannot take over their functions...

...Reuther has drawn close to him...

...It is not that he lacks the powers of leadership or conciliation—he has both—but he has failed to formulate the new strategies needed to achieve a new set of goals—to get labor "moving again...

...But President Kennedy is opposed to this solution...

...Should the AFL-CIO rule against him he will doubtless disregard the edict, and there is a possibility that he will simply remove his union from the merged organization...

...In the realm of foreign affairs Reuther has always been bitter over Meany's reliance on Jay Lovestone, the former Communist leader, and Irving Brown, AFL's emissary in Europe...

...Sixty leaders of thirty-five industrial unions (including, surprisingly, Al Hayes, president of the former AFL Machinists union) met in New York to work out strategy...

...This is exactly what happened when Southern telephone workers struck a few years ago...

...The stockpile of unsold autos, deliberately increased before negotiations, is a warning to the auto unionists that they face a long siege on the picket line...

...Factory workers, miners, truck drivers, and building trades' workers have primary power...

...Yet it produced enough metal to satisfy the total demand of the economy...

...Second, there are bitter internal disputes over old issues...

...Meany is hostile to Representative Adam Clayton Powell, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor...

...Walter Reuther, James Carey, and David McDonald were outraged, because such work was done by CIO employes in the "good old days...

...When you add to this the fact that many industries now have "strike insurance," under which a group of employers agrees to pay the losses for a struck fellow-employer, and that the major industries administer prices so that they can make a profit under almost all circumstances, you gain an appreciation of the true decline of the strike weapon as a means of gaining labor's objectives...

...At his recent union conference he formulated a number of more drastic proposals for dealing with the unemployment problem—such as a "flexible" work week, to be reduced when joblessness goes above a certain level...

...The Teamsters' Union, largest AFL-CIO affiliate by far, was expelled three and a half years ago for unsavory practices...

...The original plan to raise $7 million for an organizing campaign has been dropped, and almost half the organizing staff of AFL-CIO laid off...

...Unless there is a serious "back-to-work" movement, the strikers can win at least a partial victory...

...Hoffa and company are ready to challenge both Meany and Reuther in a dozen areas...

...Nor is this all...

...The same may be said of the auto and many other large industries...

...Hoffa, too, has solidified alliances and cleared the decks for a new era...

...Quill mili-tantly argues that this is his jurisdiction, granted him by the CIO years ago...

...But the CIO forces had the inside track with President Kennedy...

...With telephones automated, management could continue operations with only its skeleton supervisory staff...

...There is, first of all, stagnation—even regression—because of the failure of the merged organizations to achieve its stated purposes...

...It cannot continue for long in its present impasse...

...The tragedy today is that while there is no upswing in power for this latter group, the primary power of the former is being whittled away...

...Those unionists with secondary power usually cannot halt operations by their own efforts...

...Internal, conflict has thus been institutionalized...

...Up and down the line the rift continues to widen...

...They stand at mid-point with allegiances on both sides of the AFL-CIO fence...

...The unfortunate aspect of this strategy, however, is that as the strike weapon declines in effectiveness, it becomes increasingly difficult not only to win wage demands but social demands as well...

...Part of the loss resulted from the expulsion of the Teamsters and two small unions...

...When they walk off the job operations usually stop...

...A union in Ohio recently circulated a questionnaire asking its 4,000 members what they wanted in their new contract...

...That is why there has been so little progress in recent years in such fields...

...Collective bargaining has become re-gion-wfde and is moving towards a single national contract in each field...

...But in the United States, a politically weaker labor movement has had to improvise at the bargaining table...

...Jurisdictional strife, far from abating, is growing worse, in spite of a clause in the AFL-CIO constitution forbidding "raiding...

...Hoffa, surrounded by a number of liberals with a socialist background, has refashioned his union into a new mold...

...This clause was strengthened in 1959 by a plan for compulsory arbitration of jurisdictional disputes...

...Gordon M. Freeman, national president of the Electrical union, stated that this was not an isolated incident but that his organization was experiencing what he called "considerable harassment" from the former CIO brethren...

...There is another dispute simmering between the former CIO Transport Workers, headed by a colorful Mike Quill, and the Airline Pilots...

...It has helped organize fourteen craft unions, including itself, into a bloc that seeks out maintenance work...

...Today the movement is faced with its greatest postwar crisis...

...Now, Reuther felt, there was not only no live-and-let-live policy, but an invasion of thinning CIO jobs—already riddled by the reduction of more than two million jobs in manufacturing...

...The lukewarm feelings between the old AFL and the old CIO are manifest everywhere...

...Contrary to McClellan Committee assertions, the moral tone of the Teamsters has clearly improved...

...He points to the fact that not only does he have airline maintenance workers in his ranks but the stewardesses and stewards of Pan American Airways...

...The washing of labor's linen in public is strong evidence of even more heated conflicts in private...

...Most notable of them is Al Hayes, president of the 900,000-member Machinists' union, a former AFL affiliate...

...Craftsmen built the new structures, but once the factory began operations, renovation of plant and equipment fell to the industrial unions...

...He was able to protect them more adequately from sickness by his health insurance plans...

...Perhaps the most significant result of the current malaise will be a polarization towards Reuther on the one hand and Hoffa on the other...

...Meany argued at that time that even though Hoffa and Dave Beck had not been convicted by any court, the revelations of the McClel-lan Committee were sufficient to indicate that they were corrupt...

...Perhaps such competition is the only way the present stagnation can be arrested...

...Recently the craft unions in the building trades circulated a pamphlet among factory employers urging them to farm out their repair work to construction firms—with whom the craft unionists have contracts—rather than continue using full-time maintenance men who were members of the former CIO organizations...