BY FARRELL DOBBS
The selection below is excerpted from the article "New Threat to Independence of Unions." The entire article appears in Selected Articles on the Labor Movement, a collection of articles written for the Militant in 1966-67 by Farrell Dobbs, who was the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party at the time. The publication is part of the Education for Socialists series. It is copyright 1983 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.

Current thinking in Washington about stiffening the Kennedy- Landrum-Griffin Act has been summed up by A. H. Raskin of the New York Times editorial staff, who is in a good position to get the facts. "The federal government, which passed a law less than a decade ago to insure more democracy in unions," he wrote on Jan. 8, "is beginning to worry now about too much democracy in unions."

His estimate of contemplated changes in K-L-G not only suggests the nature of impending government action against labor; it calls to mind the Socialist Workers Party's analysis of the law when it was passed in 1959. When capitalist politicians pretend concern about bureaucratic abuses of democracy within the unions, the SWP said the real aim is to raise false hopes that the rank and file can rely on the government to uphold their rights. It is a trick designed to get workers to accept government intervention in internal union affairs.

The government's immediate aim is to scare the union bureaucrats and make them even more servile to capitalism than they already are. A more basic objective is to strip the unions of their autonomy and make them state instruments for policing the working class.

Adoption of the Kennedy-Landrum-Griffin law was preceded by an extended period of deliberate preparation that began during Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term in the White House. A myth was fabricated that modern unions owe their existence to the federal government, especially to Roosevelt's "New Deal." The Wagner Act of 1935 was given a phoney buildup as "Labor's Magna Charta," and it was falsely credited as the main organizer of industrial unions in basic industry. The object was twofold: to tie the workers to capitalist politics out of unearned gratitude and misplaced trust; and to lay a foundation for justifying government regulation of the unions.

The Wagner Act disapproved certain "unfair practices" by employers; for example, compelling workers to sign individual "yellow dog" contracts or to join company unions; and it disapproved openly firing workers for union activity. All this amounted to nothing more than recognition of labor's right to organize and bargain collectively.

In the actual class struggle, union protests about violations of the Wagner Act were brushed aside by the corporations and usually pigeonholed by the government. It took the bitterly fought 1936-37 wave of sit-down strikes for the workers to assert their constitutional rights.

The Wagner Act also established the National Labor Relations Board, empowering it to conduct union representation elections and to approve or void the results. With unions filing notice with the NLRB of intentions to call a strike, it joined in government maneuvers to prevent walkouts or wangle a strike settlement on terms favorable to employers. As time went by the NLRB increasingly took on the characteristics of an antilabor relations body...

In January, 1957, McCarthy introduced in the Senate a resolution to set up a "Select Committee" to investigate labor "racketeering," a term applied by reactionaries to all forms of union activity. The committee was quickly formed under the chairmanship of Senator John McClellan, an Arkansas Democrat. McCarthy was put on the committee, but he died soon thereafter and, as the May 13, 1957, Militant put it "The late Senator Joseph McCarthy got a generally bad press on the occasion of his death."

Robert F. Kennedy, who had earlier served as an apprentice witchhunter under McCarthy, was made counsel for the McClellan Committee. Later on, as attorney-general during his brother's administration, he was to spearhead a government vendetta against James Hoffa of the Teamsters.

McClellan opened the committee hearings with an announced intention of investigating various charges against union officials. The main charges were goon tactics against the rank and file, looting the union treasury and taking bribes from employers. As the hearings got under way the capitalist news media had a field day.

Good union men and women, who needed no McClellan to tell them about the wrongs inflicted by union bureaucrats, developed illusions about his intentions as they watched the hearings unfold. They began to entertain a hope that the government would actually do something to protect their rights. Not realizing that a booby trap was being laid for them, they favored what was taking place in Washington.

McClellan made the Teamsters his central target, starting with Dave Beck, who was then president of the union. Throughout the proceedings Beck relied on his rights under the Fifth Amendment. Hoffa, who was a vice president of the Teamsters at the time, got the next major grilling. While this was going on the real purpose was given away by Senator Lausche, an Ohio Democrat, who said on TV that the Teamsters were too powerful and should be curbed.

Meanwhile George Meany had called a session of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, but not to mobilize united labor defense against the government attack. He put through a criminal decision that any union official who invoked his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment should automatically lose his post. Beck was suspended from the Executive Council for taking the Fifth. A few weeks later Hoffa - who had not taken the Fifth - was elected president by a Teamsters convention and, simply because he had become one of McClellan's targets, the Teamsters were suspended from the AFL-CIO...

On the government side, a federal judge used a suit brought by union members to impose a "monitorship" over the Teamsters and it was maintained for an extended time. During the same period the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a scab can sue in the state courts for damages against a union that keeps him off the job with a picket line.  
 
 
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