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Why Shouldn't a Union Man Be a Union Man? The ILGWU and FOUR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Patrick Renshaw
Patrick Renshaw
Affiliation:
Patrick Renshaw is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England.
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Extract

Historians generally agree that in the 1950s and 1960s organized labour in the United States had become thoroughly bureaucratized. This is often explained as part of a general process of growth and maturity. In their lean, radical youth in the 1930s, those American unions which had launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations had aimed at two targets: to organize and bargain collectively, as promised by the 1935 National Labor Relations Act; and then to use this power to press for wider industrial democracy and social reform. By the time the CIO was reunited with the American Federation of Labor in 1955, this picture had been substantially changed. Increasingly labour cooperated with management and had become part of the white, male, liberal corporate power structure which ran the American capitalist industrial and political system. This military-industrial complex was the indispensable basis, not just for American prosperity but the whole Cold War strategy of containment of communism through the Pax Americana.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 185 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

The author thanks the British Academy for a generous small grants award which helped finance research for this article.

1 New York Post, 10 March 1960 and Wall Street Journal, 28 Dec. i960.

2 Telegram from William Karber, Winifred Lippman, Marvin Rogoff, Constantine Sedares and Martin Waxman, executive committee of FOUR, to David Dubinsky, president of the ILGWU, 1710 Broadway, New York, 18 Dec. i960 in Marvin Rogoff Collection, Walter P. Reuther Archive of Labor and Urban History, Wayne State University, Detroit, Box 1, File 10.

3 Halpern, Charles R., “Recognition of a Staff Union as Business Agents under the National Labor Relations Act”, Yale Law Journal, 72, No. 5 (04 1965), p. 1076Google Scholar, f.n.1, copy in the Charles Lang Collection, Reuther Archive, Box 1, File 4.

4 Dubinsky to Rogoff, 30 Dec. i960 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

5 Correspondence, 18 Jan. 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

6 Handwritten letter from Rogoff and Constantine Sedares, 27 Jan. 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

7 Fortune, April 1961, pp. 217–18.

8 Halpern, “Recognition of a Staff Union”, op.cit., p. 1076, f.n. 3.

9 New York Post and Wall Street Journal, 28 Dec. 1960.

10 Kempton, Murray, “The Bitter Joke”, New York Post, 10 03 1960Google Scholar. See also “Garment Union in Labor Trouble — From Within. Shoe on Other Foot”, Boston Sunday Globe, 25 12 1960Google Scholar.

11 Quoted by Kempton in “The Bitter Joke.”

12 See letter from Ed Banyai to S. C. Chackin, an ILGWU officer, 13 June i960 in Charles Lang Collection, Reuther Archive, Box 1, File 2, and Business Week, 14 Jan. 1961. The Plumbers' Union, which paid its staff members $15,000 a year, was probably the most generous employer. See Four Newsletter, 25 April 1961.

13 Quoted by Kempton in “The Bitter Joke.”

14 Kempton, “The Bitter Joke.”

15 Ibid. For the affidavits themselves, see Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 1. For legal clippings, see Box 1, File 4.

16 Letter from Dubinsky to John Crawley, 9 Nov. 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 11. For Dubinsky's personality, see Raskin, A. H., “Dubinsky: Herald of Change,” Labor History, 9 (Spring 1968, Special Supplement), 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Wall Street Journal, 28 Dec. 1960.

18 New York Times, 13 Dec. 1959.

19 IUE News, 27 July 1961.

20 Halpern, “Recognition of a Staff Union”, op.cit., p. 1076.

21 New York Times, 13 Dec. 1959.

22 Business Week, 14 Jan. 1961.

23 Boston Globe, 15 March 1961.

24 Levenstein, Harvey A., Communism, Anti-Communism and the CIO (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981), 142–44, 150, 211–12, 312–13Google Scholar.

25 Norman Thomas, letter in New York Herald-Tribune, 11 May 1961.

26 Kempton, “The Bitter Joke.”

27 FOUR news sheet in Rogoff Collection, Box 2, File 1.

28 Quoted in Halpern, “Recognition of a Staff Union”, op.cit., p. 1076, f.n. 5.

29 Ibid.

30 Why We Are Here in Rogoff Collection, Box 2, File 5.

31 Justice clippings in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 2 and File 3.

32 Justice, 1 May 1961, in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 3.

33 Business Week, 14 Jan. 1961.

34 Rogoff to Fred Mensch, 7 May 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

35 Rogoff to Sally Parker, Boston, Massachusetts, 7 May 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

36 Rogoff to Abe Belsky, Department of Labor and Industry, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 7 May 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

37 Letter from the ILGWU to all staff, 3 May 1961 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 2.

38 Rogoff to Harold B. Roitman, Boston, Massachusetts, 2 June 1961 and similar to Benjamin Magliozzi, United Packinghouse Workers of America in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10. This file contains other correspondence concerning the NLRB election of 12 May 1961.

39 New York Times, 3 Aug. 1962.

40 See reports in New York Times and New York Herald-Tribune in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 6.

41 justice, 1 May 1963 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 6.

42 Halpern, “Recognition of a Staff Union”, op.cit., pp. 1077–78 and f.n. 14.

43 NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 US 11, 127 (1944).

44 Halpern, “Recognition of a Staff Union”, op.cit., pp. 1079–80 and f.n. 27.

45 Ibid., p. 1087.

46 New York Times and New York Herald-Tribune, in May 1963, in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 6.

47 Ibid.

48 FOUR Newsletter, 19 Feb. 1964, and US Court of Appeals notice, Court docket No. 28228 in Rogoff Collection, Box 1, File 10.

49 Ibid.

50 FOUR Newsletter in Rogoff Collection, Box 2, File 5.

51 Packard Motor Co. v. NLRB, 330 US 48; (1947) and Labor-Management Relations Act (Taft-Hartley Act), 101, 61 Stat. 137 (1947). For a full discussion, see Millis, Harry A. and Brown, Emily Clark, From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley: a Study in National Labor Policy and Labor Relations (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1950), 235–36, 244 and 265Google Scholar.

52 FOUR Newsletter in Rogoff Collection, Box 2, File 5.

53 Lens, Sidney, “The Decline of Labor”, The Commonwealth Magazine, 19 06 1964, in Rogoff Collection, Box 2, File 5Google Scholar.

54 Quoted in Business Week, 14 Jan. 1961.

55 Business Week, 14 Jan. 1961.

56 Sanford M. Katz to David Cohen in the matter of ILGWU v. NLRB, 12 May 196; in Lang Collection, Box 1, File 6.

57 Ibid.

58 FOUR Bulletin 196; in Lang Collection, Box 1, File 6.

59 Katz to Cohen, 12 May 1965 in Lang Collection, Box 1, File 6.

60 Raskin, A. H., “David Dubinsky and the American Dream”, The New Leader, 11 04 1966Google Scholar; Wechsler, James A., “Dubinsky's Exit: Farewell Lines”, New York Post, 17 03 1966Google Scholar.

61 Myerson, Michael, “ILGWU: Fighting for Lower Wages”, Ramparts, 10 1969Google Scholar.

62 Tyler, Gus, Chelsea Clinton News, 30 03 1967Google Scholar.