-One of Robert Fitch's contentions is that labor writers tend -to see and portray unions through the rose-colored glasses, filtering -out facts that contradict their positive view.
Some may while others do the opposite. There is a long history of leftwing union writers who have been bashing the AFL and the racist and/or business unionist parts of its history for the last hundred years. One of the early labor history books I read -- handed out to us young labor organizers by that classically mobbed up HERE international union -- was LABORS UNTOLD STORY, produced by leftwingers associated with the United Electrical Workers, which condemned union leaders for timidity and collaboration with Red Scares and the establishment.
There are so many labor books of so many different ideological stripes that it's just silly to claim that "labor writers" do any such thing, since such writers are as sectarian as any other group. What's shocking is that Fitch is writing a story that plays into every mainstream stereotype of unions and he actually wants to pose as some brave iconoclast in the labor writing field. Hell, he's not even an iconoclast in the Spring 2006 labor writing field, since Linda Chavez has a new book out:
Betrayal : How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400052599/104-5905314-3998332?v=glance&n=283155
with a lot on electoral politics but also chapters like "Money, Mansions, and Mobsters: Union Corruption."
Aside from the discussion of corruption in many individual labor books, there is a whole genre of books about unions and corruption. For example, see
Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union (2003) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252028252/qid=1142016646/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5905314-3998332?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
The Imperfect Union: A History of Corruption in American Trade Unions (1970) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525131957/qid=1142016646/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/104-5905314-3998332?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Power and Greed: Inside the Teamsters Empire of Corruption http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0531151050/qid=1142016844/sr=1-34/ref=sr_1_34/104-5905314-3998332?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Corruption and Racketeering in the Labor Movement http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0875462472/qid=1142016897/sr=1-42/ref=sr_1_42/104-5905314-3998332?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
So Fitch is saying little knew, just saying it with less rigor than many others.
I'm as happy as anyone when a corrupt union official gets taken down, but it's precisely the oversize importance Fitch and others gives to such figures, out of any larger context or comparative analysis with all the honest unions out there, that makes his book so frustrating.
Nathan Newman