Review: TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: SAMUEL GOMPERS, GEORGE MEANY, LANE KIRKLAND AND THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN LABOR
November 2000

Buhle on the AFL: Which side were they on?

The bureaucratic mentality of U.S. labor leaders, marked by the demand for total control over the membership and the ruthless destruction of any opposition, is well known. Not as well known, however, is the extent of the outright conscious betrayal by that leadership of the interests of workers both at home and abroad, which is detailed in Paul Buhle's book, TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: SAMUEL GOMPERS, GEORGE MEANY, LANE KIRKLAND AND THE TRAGEDY OF AMERICAN LABOR (Monthly Review Press, l999).

Exposure of then AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland's collusion with the U.S. government by putting the resources of the AFL-CIO at the disposal of the CIA certainly contributed to the swelling rank-and-file dissatisfaction that led to Kirkland's resignation in 1995 and replacement by John Sweeney as head of the AFL-CIO.

However, Kirkland's collaboration with the U.S. government against the interests of workers in Europe, Asia and Latin America and the organizations they had created to fight their oppressors, far from being an exception, followed the tradition set by the AFL's first president, Samuel Gompers, and followed by Kirkland's predecessor George Meany.

Gompers, a socialist in his youth, underwent a total transformation into opposite in his climb to the leadership of the AFL in l886 and afterward. He set the practices of accommodation to American business interests, collaboration with the Democratic Party, support of U.S. wars, and narrow exclusionary craft union jurisdictions. His opposition to independent political action and industrial organization led to the crushing of all opposition, especially from the left.

The reward for such accommodations was renewed offensives against labor. Anti-labor red squads and court injunctions led strikebreaking after World War I. The Taft-Hartley Labor Act after World War II, which is still on the books, can destroy the organized labor movement. The government and corporations obviously understand the class struggle and the need for capital's dictatorial control over workers much more profoundly than the so-called labor leaders.

Eminent Cold Warrior Meany deepened the leadership's regression from 1952 on with the sweeping purge of leftists and other opposition from the unions using the FBI, HUAC, police red squad files and a willing press. He so passionately supported the war in Vietnam that he ordered New York's construction workers (hard hats) to attack anti-war demonstrators in the streets. Meanwhile, corruption flourished, membership plummeted and the leaders lived sumptuous lives as their salaries skyrocketed and workers' living standards declined.

Buhle attributes the growth of the UMWA after its near collapse in l929 to national legislation under Roosevelt. In fact John L. Lewis, in 1931, threw the union's entire treasury into an organizing drive that inspired rank-and-file miners to walk the railroads to organize non-union miners, swelling both the membership and treasury-both of which were used to organize the CIO.

Buhle concludes that there is hope for a U.S. labor revival under AFL-CIO leader Sweeney if policies of inclusion and militant action are developed and implemented that match the inclusionary vision and practices of the Knights of Labor after the Civil War, the IWW (Wobblies) at the turn of the century and the CIO in its early organizing days. As Buhle's own narrative clearly reveals, however, the overriding need for labor is not only inclusionary militant action, but more importantly a revolutionary philosophy to give its action direction to not only totally uproot and transform society, but also to assure no regression after the conquest of power.

--Andy Phillips