> And you could thank that for Taft-Hartley too. The AFL-CIO
> threatened to take to the streets if it passed. And Congress
> laughed - knowing that by "take to the street" they meant a
> protest march, and some hot air. If the CIO had still existed,
> that threat would have been scarier. Horrid as Truman was,
> he did veto Taft-Hartley. You would only have had to shift
> a small number of legislators to have upheld that veto; so
> odds are the continued existence of the CIO would have
> made the difference.
Gar -- Your timeline is messed up here. Taft-Hartley passed in 1947; the AFL-CIO merger did not happen until 1955. When the left supported Henry Wallace in 1948, one of their arguments was that while Truman did veto Taft-Hartley, he could have also twisted some arms in Congress to sustain his veto, but did not, because he secretly wanted Taft-Hartley to pass. I don't know how true this assessment was, since virtually all of the Democrats who supported Taft-Hartley were Southerners who by that point were incensed at Truman for supporting some civil rights measures. But I suppose that's a question to which we'll never really know the answer for sure.
There was considerable division WITHIN the CIO at this time, a fact that for some reason is being overlooked in this well-nigh-abstract discussion of "corruption." One division was how to respond to one of Taft-Hartley's now-forgotten provisions (along with the other restrictive crap like the ban on secondary boycotts, all of which are still in place), namely, the "non-Communist affidavits." At a time when even Phil Murray was refusing to sign these on principle (and which John Lewis never signed on principle -- he of the formerly AFL Mineworkers, a founding union of the CIO, but one that no one would ever accuse of being corruption-free), Saint Walter Reuther of the corruption-free UAW signed them so that he could raid the left unions, beginning with UE in GM's electrical division, and then moving on to the Farm Equipment Workers and others.
So as I've said before, I think that the problems in US labor are deeper and wider ideological problems of opportunism (including, as Michael Yates has pointed out, a subordination to US foreign policy), and that they certainly cannot be explained through vulgar economist "analyses" that cite the supposed proximate economic interests of union leaders as an explanatory factor. The legacy of a movement that chose to pursue employer-based bargaining around issues that did not touch "management rights," all in lieu of the wider social reform (including national health care) that was on the CIO's original agenda and which remained on the agenda of the labor movement in other countries -- this is a difficult and downright poisonous legacy indeed, but the material basis for this particular trade-union ideology was more than could be found in, say, the supposedly lucrative opportunities for corruption in the Taft-Hartley health and welfare funds (which are not actually run by unions, I might add, though I know that that's a facty detail that annoys the pursuers of truthiness, so I'll let sleeping dogs lie). Members were also invested in this sort of thing, and for many of them it worked for a while. But this arrangement blew up in the late 70s with the demise of industry-wide bargaining in industries like steel and the mass, permanent layoffs that followed.
The remaining opportunities for petty corruption among union leaders today are problematic and ought to be dislodged, even if that requires "authoritarian" trusteeships and strong action that will be denounced in "Labor Notes." But such opportunities are a byproduct -- and not the cause -- of the deeper structural problems. And labor's social and political weakness now is not explained with reference to such corruption. The real story is labor's continuing membership decline and lack of industrial power. That will not change until more workers are organized. And I agree in principle with the idea that there is only so much that current unions can do to change that. Those that actually do it deserve support and participation from the left instead of sniping about how they're "bottom feeders" because, gee, they organize mostly non-white and female low-income workers. But the kind of organizing that will actually turn around this chronic slide into oblivion is going to require a real social movement, perhaps several waves of social movements, and unions cannot simply will such a movement into existence even if they're interested in it -- which in the case of most unions is a big "if" indeed. But then, none of us can really will such a movement into existence, can we? In saying this I am not suggesting that we do nothing and simply hope for the New Jerusalem to suddenly appear -- far from it. But a little humility about what we're going to be able to accomplish -- and a lot less "left-wing" childishness from people who always like to make the perfect the enemy of the good -- would not hurt matters.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories