Dangerous Miracle

At the conclusion of last week's AFL-CIO unity meeting in New York, one pundit called the merger "the miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street." Few people, remembering the rancorous night when John L. Lewis pulled his Committee of Industrial Organizations out of the American Federation of Labor, could imagine the new labor group as anything except a battleground for rival bigwigs. When Mike Quill and some of the more militant CIO leaders protested the merger heatedly, observers predicted that the miraculous enterprise would shortly founder.

To the amazement of many, however, the first formal conclave of the new united organization was marked by a serene meeting of minds between the former heads of the AFL and CIO. Both George Meany and Walter Reuther spoke of the internal amity and potential of the newly-built AFL-CIO. More significantly, both agreed fully on the important subject of labor's future in politics. They attacked the recent statement of Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater, that the AFL-CIO had "no right to endorse a political nominee" and his suggestion that labor be "politically disfranchised." Reuther replied to Goldwater directly: "Our answer to you, Senator," Reuther said, "is not less political action but more political action on the part of the American labor movement." Meany, in his address, reiterated Reuther's stand.

These statements represent the culmination of a grad "Geneva spirit" just as much. Worse, in taking a poke at the Russians he has unnecessarily infuriated a nation whose friendship is crucial, thus making the Russian strategy doubly effective. It seems that Mr. Dulles has again cut off our national nose to spite our patriotic face. ual change in the policy of large labor groups. At the inception of the AFL, the organization steadfastly refused to take political action, relying mainly on building up the processes of collective bargaining. Founder Samuel Gompers warned the fledgling Federation that political action could prove disastrous to the labor movement as a whole and urged the AFL to maintain a steady pressure on employers for better working conditions.

As the nation became more heavily industrialized, however, labor leaders realized that better working conditions could, in many cases, be obtained only through governmental action. While paying lip service to Gompers' credo, many unions openly or surreptitiously backed friendly candidates, while almost all opened legislative lobbies in Washington and State capitals.

The AFL's first overt entrance into national politics came in 1924 when its convention passed a resolution backing Wisconsin's Senator Robert LaFollette who was running on a third-party, Progressive ticket. That same year, the AFL drew up a program for national legislation which contained many planks not connected directly with the labor movement. LaFollette's defeat convinced many of the Federation's leaders that Gompers was right after all, and that their organization entered national campaigns at the risk of getting its ears pinned back.

At the same time, however, the labor lobby in Washington began to achieve some real results, and the AFL found itself obligated to protect its gains. The passage of the Clayton Act, exempting unions from anti-trust prosecution, gave labor a stake in maintaining a friendly national administration. The passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 furthered labor's concern with national politics.

Although the non-intervention ideology and the examples of many ill-fated adventures in 19th-century America and in Europe deterred the Federation from beginning a separate political party, it soon became clear that the organization would be forced to take a more active role on the national scene. In 1947, the AFL established a political subsidiary--Labor's League for Political Education which promised, with AFL financing, to "support candidates on the basis of their record, and not on the basis of personal party favors and party prejudices." The CIO had fewer qualms about direct political activity, setting up the Political Action Committee in 1944.

In that year, labor made its first entry into the national political arena since the abortive 1924 campaign when the CIO endorsed FDR's candidacy. The AFL was somewhat slower but no less fervent in its political affiliations. Although it did not back Truman in 1948, it allowed its top men to aid the Democrats on an unofficial basis. The struggle to repeal the Taft-Hartley Bill made the actions of the LLPE and the PAC even more partisan and, in 1952, both AFL and CIO conventions formally approved Stevenson. American labor had finally, and perhaps irrevocably, entered the ground upon which it had feared to tread.

The new AFL-CIO promises, on the basis of Reuther's and Meany's statements, to extend this political action even farther. There are, however, numerous stumbling blocks to organized labor as a political force. Many professional politicians, while openly welcoming the prestige and financial support that goes with big labor's support, privately deprecate AFL and CIO endorsement as a "kiss of death" in many campaigns. They point to the Ohio Senatorial election of 1950 where the CIO tried to make the Taft-Hartley Act a major issue. The attempt failed miserably; Bob Taft, the Act's sponsor, won by thumping pluralities--even in districts where a large proportion of the voters belonged to unions--and in spite of the CIO's mobilization of huge financial and propaganda resources behind Democrat "Jumpin' Joe" Ferguson.

The supposition that many politicians draw from this is that labor support not only repels large segments of the voters unconnected with unions, but that unions also cannot rally their own members to any political standard they choose. The reasons for this lie in the non-Marxian sociology of the American workingman. Its implications point a warning to the leaders of the new labor federation. While Meany and Reuther may visualize the AFL-CIO as a vast new political fulcrum which can make politicians tremble and cause labor policies to be transformed into political action, the task ahead may be much more difficult than either of them realizes. And, in making the attempt to influence political currents, the AFL-CIO chiefs may be risking more than they contemplate.