Labor, 1946–Present

views updated

LABOR, 1946–PRESENT

The labor movement, begun in earnest in the 1930s to gain rights and benefits for workers, was often considered radical. Wars and ideologies of different periods shaped the labor movement. Before World War II, some unions were influenced by socialism and communism's appeals to social justice. In the Cold War era (1946–1991) that followed World War II, labor shifted its image from radical to patriotic organizations that opposed communism at home and abroad.

The modern U.S. industrial relations system began in 1935 with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), providing U.S. workers with the legal rights to organize unions and to negotiate contracts with employers. It was institutionalized during World War II and became legitimized in the immediate postwar years with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which balanced both management and labor rights. After the end of World War II, the nation experienced full employment and relative prosperity for skilled labor. Many of these skilled laborers (mostly white and male) had served in the military during World War II and had acquired the necessary job skills for this transition to skilled industrial work.

the military-industrial complex

Labor union leaders accepted this new economic arrangement, called military Keynesianism (referring to the theory of the British economist John Maynard Keynes that recovery from an economic recession must be linked to government-sponsored full employment). The federal government spent annually in the range of 10 to 12 percent of gross national product (GNP) on defense in order to combat what it viewed as the growing threat of Communism throughout the world. The aerospace, electronics, motor vehicle, and steel industries directly benefited from this outlay of public money, and corporations that were the cornerstones of these industries, such as General Motors, General Electric, U.S. Steel, Boeing, and Lockheed, became increasingly powerful under this arrangement. President Dwight Eisenhower characterized this as the "military-industrial complex."

At this time capital accumulation expanded dramatically and productivity soared, with profitability achieving new highs. This enabled some of the country's largest and most powerful unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), the United Steel Workers (USW), the United Electrical Workers (UE), and the International Association of Machinists (IAM), which represented employees at these companies, to negotiate labor contracts that contained significant increases in wages, cost of living adjustments, fringe benefits, reduced hours of work, and improved working conditions, in exchange for fewer strikes and stable labor relations. This orientation led to the continuing expansion of consumer society for all economic classes in the United States throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In short, the Cold War, and the arms race that it fostered, strengthened organized labor.

afl vs. cio

Underpinning the growth and expansion of the military-industrial complex were the foreign and military policy positions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Upon the conclusion of World War II, the CIO did not adopt a strong anticommunist position. In fact, it joined the new World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), established in the fall of 1945, some of whose members were Communist trade union federations. The AFL, on the other hand, took a much harder line against Communism. Often, the AFL—and later the AFL-CIO, after the 1955 merger—took foreign policy positions that were more anticommunist than those of the U.S. government.

During its 1947 convention, the AFL came out in support of the Marshall Plan in order to prevent what it believed was the impending takeover of Europe by Communism. Because a number of the CIO unions were led by the Communists and their sympathizers, the 1947 CIO convention showed lukewarm support for the Marshall Plan. In 1949 to 1950 the CIO expelled eleven far-left unions. Adopting foreign policy positions more similar to the AFL at this time, the CIO began to make anti-Communist pronouncements attacking the Soviet Union for its "aggressive expansionism" and then withdrew from the WFTU. The AFL put its anti-Communist principles into practice. AFL leaders George Meany, David Dubinsky, Jay Lovestone, and Irving Brown worked actively to destroy Communist-led unions in Western Europe.

Along with the majority of the U.S. public, both the AFL and the CIO supported U.S. involvement in the Korean War when it began in 1950. However, the two federations took different positions as the war progressed. The AFL stated that the U.S. military should not withdraw from Korea until the Soviet Union and its supporters had been roundly defeated. The CIO, however, came out in favor of a restricted war and in 1951 called for the expulsion of the invaders of South Korea, increased attempts at diplomacy, unification of the nation through nonmilitary means, and offers of aid. After the AFL-CIO merger in 1955, the organization, led by Meany, the federation president, took a hard line in its foreign policy by attacking the Eisenhower administration for being soft with respect to the Soviet and Chinese dangers.

vietnam war

Throughout the 1960s, the major foreign policy issue occupying the AFL-CIO was the Vietnam War. In November 1963, in a resolution passed at the AFL-CIO convention, the federation charged the Soviet Union with initiating "wars of liberation" in Korea, Laos, and Vietnam. This position helps to explain the AFL-CIO's vigorous support for the Johnson and Nixon administrations' policies to prosecute the Vietnam War.

From 1964 to 1968, President Lyndon Johnson often consulted Meany on foreign policy issues while the AFL-CIO unequivocally backed the Johnson administration's escalation of the Vietnam War. When many Americans turned against the war after the Tet offensive in early 1968, the federation's support for administration policy remained resolute. After Richard Nixon's election in 1968, Meany and the AFL-CIO supported the president's policy in Vietnam, although the federation was highly critical of Nixon's pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union and China.

As happened in other sectors of American society, the Vietnam War divided labor. As early as February 1965, opposition to the AFL-CIO's position on Vietnam arose in the UAW when Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey sent a memo to the officers and the board members of the union expressing concern about developments in Vietnam. Through the early 1970s, opposition AFLCIO unionists grew in number and continued to organize against the war through groups and initiatives like Labor Assembly for Peace, the Trade Union Division of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), and Labor for Peace, which helped to end this deeply un-popular war.

bibliography

Gershman, Carl. The Foreign Policy of American Labor. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1975.

Hero, Alfred O., Jr., and Starr, Emil. The Reuther-Meany Foreign Policy Dispute: Union Leaders and Members View World Affairs. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications, 1970.

Koscielski, Frank. Divided Loyalties: American Unions and the Vietnam War. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999; Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1975.

Radosh, Ronald. American Labor and United States Foreign Policy. New York: Random House, 1969.

Renshaw, Patrick. American Labor and Consensus Capitalism, 1935–1990. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

Victor G. Devinatz

Americans at War