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The Stance of Labor
- Amidst all this, what of organized labor, the historic institutional representative
of the exploited, the presumed "countervailing power" against the excesses
of Big Business? The contemporary social assault on the labor movement is
of crisis proportions. To the average American, "big labor" is a growing cancer
equal in impact to Big Business -- nothing could be more distorted, even granting
a sizable union bureaucracy. But in addition to public exaggerations, the
labor crisis can be measured in several ways. First, the high expectations
of the newborn AFL-CIO of 30 million members by 1965 are suffering a reverse
unimaginable five years ago. The demise of the dream of "organizing the unorganized"
is dramatically reflected in the AFL-CIO decision, just two years after its
creation, to slash its organizing staff in half. From 15 million members when
the AFL and the CIO merged, the total has slipped to 13.5 million. During
the post-war generation, union membership nationally has increased by four
million -- but the total number of workers has jumped by 13 million. Today
only 40 percent of all non-agricultural workers are protected by any form
or organization. Second, organizing conditions are going to worsen. Where
labor now is strongest -- in industries -- automation is leading to an attrition
of available work. As the number of jobs dwindles, so does labor's power of
bargaining, since management can handle a strike in an automated plant more
easily than the older mass-operated ones.
- More important perhaps, the American economy has changed radically in the
last decade, as suddenly the number of workers producing goods became fewer
than the number in "nonproductive" areas -- government, trade, finance, services,
utilities, transportation. Since World War II "white collar" and "service"
jobs have grown twice as fast as have, "blue collar" production jobs. Labor
has almost no organization in the expanding occupational areas of the new
economy, but almost all of its entrenched strength in contracting areas. As
big government hires more, as business seeks more office workers and skilled
technicians, and as growing commercial America demands new hotels, service
stations and the like, the conditions will become graver still. Further, there
is continuing hostility to labor by the Southern states and their industrial
interests -- meaning " runaway plants, cheap labor threatening the organized
trade union movement, and opposition from Dixiecrats to favorable labor legislation
in Congress. Finally, there is indication that Big Business, for the sake
of public relations if nothing more, has acknowledged labor's "right" to exist,
but has deliberately tried to contain labor at its present strength, preventing
strong unions from helping weaker ones or from spreading or unorganized sectors
of the economy. Business is aided in its efforts by proliferation of "right-to-work"
laws at state levels (especially in areas where labor is without organizing
strength to begin with), and anti-labor legislation in Congress.
- In the midst of these besetting crises, labor itself faces its own problems
of vision and program. Historically, there can be no doubt as to its worth
in American politics -- what progress there has been in meeting human needs
in this century rests greatly with the labor movement. And to a considerable
extent the social democracy for which labor has fought externally is reflected
in its own essentially democratic character: representing millions of people,
no millions of dollars; demanding their welfare, not eternal profit. Today
labor remains the most liberal "mainstream" institution -- but often its liberalism
represents vestigial commitments self-interestedness, unradicalism. In some
measure labor has succumbed to institutionalization, its social idealism waning
under the tendencies of bureaucracy, materialism, business ethics. The successes
of the last generation perhaps have braked, rather than accelerated labor's
zeal for change. Even the House of Labor has bay windows: not only is this
true of the labor elites, but as well of some of the rank-and-file. Many of
the latter are indifferent unionists, uninterested in meetings, alienated
from the complexities of the labor-management negotiating apparatus, lulled
to comfort by the accessibility of luxury and the opportunity of long-term
contracts. "Union democracy" is not simply inhibited by labor leader elitism,
but by the unrelated problem of rankand -file apathy to the tradition of unionism.
The crisis of labor is reflected in the coexistence within the unions of militant
Negro discontents and discriminatory locals, sweeping critics of the obscuring
"public interest" marginal tinkering of government and willing handmaidens
of conservative political leadership, austere sacrificers and business-like
operators, visionaries and anachronisms -- tensions between extremes that
keep alive the possibilities for a more militant unionism. Too, there are
seeds of rebirth in the "organizational crisis" itself: the technologically
unemployed, the unorganized white collar men and women, the migrants and farm
workers, the unprotected Negroes, the poor, all of whom are isolated now from
the power structure of the economy, but who are the potential base for a broader
and more forceful unionism.
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