the house of labor: before and after the anti jeffersonian termites took over ....

this book review made me......

                        queeeesy 

see what u feel 


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"in this account
 of a lifetime of support
 for the
advancement of democracy
 inside the house of labor,
you'll find the better-known characters
 and their
stories of labor misdeeds,
 such as United Mine Workers
President Tony Boyle 

But the compelling
stories of lesser knowns
 who took on crooked unions,
like Dow Wilson and Lloyd Green
 of the San Francisco
Brotherhood of Painters 
-- both of whom were murdered
for their courageous efforts 
-- are a treasure trove of
historical narrative 
about union politics,
 human
frailties, and true grit 
that form the largely untold
dark drama of U.S. labor history 
of the last half
century.

This book is about individuals,
 including Benson
himself,
 who had the courage 
of their convictions.
 It is also about the cynic-inspiring tenacity,
 and the sometimes criminality,
 of so-called union leaders 
who fought rank-and-file insurgents
 at every turn.

 This includes the deeply troubling
 role of the AFL-CIO
throughout much 
of the history covered in Benson's
book. "

" Benson was present at the rebirth,
 of the
U.S. labor movement 
in the first half of the twentieth
century.
 as a teenager he witnessed the mass
upsurge in union organizing 
that took place in the
Great Depression era
 of the United States."

 "After
working in various blue collar jobs,
 he eventually
helped edit Labor Action.
 During the 1950s he became
increasingly 
aware of and deeply concerned 
about trade
union rebels and reformers 
who were harassed, beaten --
and sometimes murdered --
when they voiced concerns
about undemocratic and authoritarian union rule
missing union funds,
and corrupt collusion with
employers. 

Soon after, in 1960, 
he launched Union
Democracy in Action, 
which was, as he writes in his
book, "a one-man-band newsletter 
to break the story of
the lonely union reformer." 

Benson, supporter of the
often isolated union rebel,
 began his new career in the
mirror image of those he championed.
 He spent the next
dozen years as a lonely crusader 
supporting union
insurgents' efforts 
to apply the provisions of federal
legislation adopted 
in 1959 designed to enforce basic
democratic rights in unions,"

" the Labor-Management
Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA)."

Benson brought attention to 
the courageous union
members who stood up to labor union 
thugs and gangsters
-- union leaders in name only
 -- who controlled jobs,
colluded with employers,
 tolerated no internal union
dissent,
 threatened and carried out violence
, and used
the union treasury 
as a personal piggy bank,

 also known
as stealing. 
Despite this corruption 
that threatened to
undermine public confidence 
in labor unions and the
future growth of organized labor, 
all of which Benson
fought so hard to expose,
 the AFL-CIO did nothing.

Twelve years after
 he launched Union Democracy in
Action, 
Benson had succeeded 
in developing a network of
rank-and-file union activists.

 He wanted to do
something larger,
 but he had no money and remained
isolated 
from funds that might be secured
 from sometime
supporters -- 
social liberals with means, 
civil
libertarians and labor progressives and intellectuals.
While feeling discouraged,
 his vision and tenacity
inspired support 
from an unlikely source. 
An old YPSL
friend, now with money, 
donated nearly $40,000 to help
Benson launch 
the Association for Union Democracy 
in
1972.

Through law suits,
 public campaigns,
 education classes,
and its newsletter,
 Union Democracy Review, 
the AUD
under Benson supported labor movement
 reformers
fighting to gain control of their unions by
strengthening union democracy and eradicating
corruption in campaigns against entrenched power in
unions large and small, but notably the Civil Service
Employees Association in New York, Steel Workers,
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the
construction industry, International Longshoremen's
Association, United Mine Workers of America, and of
course, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
(IBT).

Benson describes with satisfaction how the U.S. Justice
Department's consent decree imposed on the Teamsters in
1989 facilitated the election of reformer Ron Carey to
the office of Teamster General President in 1991. Carey
subsequently had the IBT rejoin the AFL-CIO, whose
votes made the crucial difference in the 1995 election
of upstart John Sweeney as president of the labor
federation, the first contested election in the then
40-year history of the AFL-CIO. Sweeney's election
created a sense of hope that it was a new day for
organized labor in the United States -- hope that
labor's advancing decline could be halted and that a
reinvigorated effort to "organize the unorganized"
would lead eventually to millions of new union members
at the dawn of a new century. Was this unique
democratic moment -- a palpable demand among unionists
for accountability in the life of this otherwise long-
entrenched bureaucracy -- fueled by the cumulative
effect of AUD's efforts, especially with regard to
developments within the Teamsters? Benson believes that
it was.

But nine years later it is hard to recall that sense of
hope spawned by this democratic moment. Herman Benson's
book arrives at a time of great unease about the future
of organized labor in the United States. The condition
of the U.S. labor movement has worsened considerably
since 1995, threatening a transformation of the labor
movement different from the hopeful vision suggested in
the title of Benson's book. The increasing disconnects
between collective bargaining and union power are
widening: wage increases are smaller, health care and
pension benefits are less secure, and the right to
strike and the right to organize are functionally legal
fictions. These conditions will only worsen given the
reelection of George W. Bush.

There is insufficient evidence that a democratic
transformation of the labor movement continued to
develop following the change at the top of the AFL-CIO
in 1995. Service Employees International Union
President Andrew Stern released a discussion paper on
the future of organized labor, Unite to Win, just after
the November election. To his credit, Stern is
promoting a discussion about the need for restructuring
the labor movement in significant ways so that unions
can better represent workers, organize more workers and
win better contracts. Though the issuance of the
discussion paper is itself a refreshing democratic act
by a major labor leader, the substance of the document
mentions the word democracy only twice. Stern's six-
page paper is constructed around ten key points,
important all, but not one specifies the need for more
democracy at all levels of the labor movement.

>From my perch, the biggest internal threat to the labor
movement is apathy and lack of involvement by rank-and-
file union members. To organize the unorganized, and to
organize the organized, requires member involvement
because labor's power lies in the mobilization of its
members. Involvement and mobilization are indicative of
and the result of a union that reflects the more
democratic society we want to create. As Benson writes
eloquently in his closing chapter, "The Power of
Democracy,"

The existence of democracy does not eliminate the need
for intelligent leadership nor does it automatically
supply constructive policies; but it does serve as a
means of finding that leadership, arriving at those
policies, and rallying public support for them.
Meanwhile, the discussion, the debate, the political
and social battles continue while we search for
answers. It is not absurd, in fact it is the essence of
realism, to suggest that an infusion of the spirit of
democracy in its own internal life will make the labor
movement a more powerful force and give it moral
authority in the defense of social justice as the
battle over social policy continues.

All too often, the power of information, ideas, access
to people, shared leadership, collectively developed
vision and strategies are in the hands of a few, often
the senior elected officers and senior staff, rather
than dispersed across the organization and its members.
If we demand equality, fairness, and democracy, we must
practice it within our labor organizations. If we do
not practice our core values, then why would anyone
want to join us in our pursuit of economic justice and
democratic participation?

When Benson, now in his mid-eighties, launched the
Association for Union Democracy in 1972, he surely had
no idea that such a little-funded and small operation
would still be operating more than thirty years later,
but AUD, now based with a small staff in Brooklyn,
continues today. But still today, among many in
official union circles, AUD is looked upon with the
same loathing as a union buster. Why this is so surely
has much to do with Benson's views on "the divided soul
of American labor leadership." Benson writes that "the
labor movement . . . stands on the side of the people
against the privileges of wealth, for workers rights
against corporate power. But on all of the issues that
involve the rights of workers inside their unions, that
same labor movement, as represented by most of its top
officials, stubbornly defends limitations, restrictions
and repression."

To help sooth, and enlighten, the divided soul of
American labor leadership, Benson's book could have
strengthened its noble message by exploring what are
the deep roots of U.S. trade union corruption and
discussing the problems of democracy:

•     Organized labor in the United States developed
in the context of a particular capitalist country since
the civil war. How has this shaped the nature and
extent of our nation's union corruption?

•     How does the amount of and nature of union
corruption in the United States compare to union
corruption in other countries?

•     What is the importance of democracy in unions
relative to other essential components of building
organizational power? For example, if a union has many
of the forms of democracy without the substance of
power -- if technological change and plant closings
have drastically reduced union density and bargaining
power, or the number of signatory employers is in
decline -- what is the meaning of democracy in this
context?

•     Running a union is very difficult even in the
best of circumstances because a union must be, as A.J.
Muste wrote more than 70 years ago, an "army and town
meeting." Because both features are permanent, the
conflicts within unions to forge both power and
community may be a sign of life and strong leadership
and not an indication of a lack of democracy.

 
 
                  "  40 years ago
 in an article entitled, 
"Democracy Is Inevitable," 

Philip Slater and Warren Bennis
 wrote  


"democracy becomes
a functional necessity 
whenever a social system is
competing for survival 
under conditions of chronic
change." 


If their proposition is true 
and relevant to
the U.S. labor movement today,
 then Herman Benson's book 
and its emphasis on democracy
as a strategy for labor's revival
 could not be
timelier."



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