policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
election would render inevitable the purging of the Democratic Party and
allow a radical transformation of its philosophy and structure. The
triumph of the antiwar wing of the Party in 1972 with the nominations of
George McGovern confirmed the salience of this perspective.
McGovern's d.efeat, a "centrist" reaction set in.
4. Laboi"
Unlike organized labor in the 1930s,
But, following
labor as a distinct social
and political group in the 1960s was no longer considered a threat to the
establishment.
The communist element within labor had been purged by then.
Walter Reuther who briefly had espoused socialism in the 1940s and later
became president of UAW remained the primary left-liberal spokesman in
organized labor. By the 1960s, labor leaders participated fully in presidential
politics and each president during the Vietnam war years of the
1960s and 1970s traded favors for the support of labor.
The focus of organized labor in America had changed, centering
less upon radical social/political change and more upon the issues of
wages, jobs, hours and working conditions. For many Americans, trade
unions became synonymous with George Meany,
the long-time leader of the
AFL-CIO, and labor appeared to many as the "defender of the status quo."
The character of the AFL-CIO had changed as industry in America shifted
from emphasis on labor-intensive production to automation.
Such alteration
in the rature of American industry was accompanied by an increase in
service industries, and a consequent growth of white collar workers within
the ranks of labor, and subsequently within the unions.
Although union
members made up a shrinking minority 6f the total labor force, with prosperity,
the AFL-CIO came to represent to a far lesser extent the disadvantaged
and poor whom unions had traditionally served.
was becoming more and more middle class was clear. By 1970,
That organized labor
#! •the median income of the rank and file was $12,350,
much higher than the $8,440 annual pay for nonunionized
p eople in comparable jobs. Fully 46 percent lived
outside cities, mainly in the suburbs. Although
78 percent of all blacks were in jobs eligible for
union membership, only 35 percent of these blacks were
in fact in unions.29/
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