Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Prefatory Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Congress of Industrial Organizations: Left, Right, and Center
- 2 “Who Gets the Bird?”
- 3 Insurgency, Radicalism, and Democracy
- 4 Lived Democracy: UAW Ford Local 600
- 5 “Red Company Unions”?
- 6 Rank-and-File Democracy and the “Class Struggle in Production”
- 7 “Pin Money” and “Pink Slips”
- 8 The “Big 3” and Interracial Solidarity
- 9 The Red and the Black
- 10 Conclusion: An American Tragedy
- 11 Epilogue: The “Third Labor Federation” That Never Was
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
6 - Rank-and-File Democracy and the “Class Struggle in Production”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Prefatory Note
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Congress of Industrial Organizations: Left, Right, and Center
- 2 “Who Gets the Bird?”
- 3 Insurgency, Radicalism, and Democracy
- 4 Lived Democracy: UAW Ford Local 600
- 5 “Red Company Unions”?
- 6 Rank-and-File Democracy and the “Class Struggle in Production”
- 7 “Pin Money” and “Pink Slips”
- 8 The “Big 3” and Interracial Solidarity
- 9 The Red and the Black
- 10 Conclusion: An American Tragedy
- 11 Epilogue: The “Third Labor Federation” That Never Was
- References
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
For radicals of all hues in American labor, “rank-and-file democracy” and effectiveness in the class struggle have always been inseparable. Certainly, this was a recurrent theme in the political rhetoric of the Red union leagues: “The fight for industrial unionism goes hand-in-hand,” as the TUEL's founder declared, “ … with the need for genuine trade union democracy.” Or, as the 1927 TUEL handbook on the “misleaders of labor” said: Reactionary leaders erect “powerful bureaucratic machines … to prevent the left wing from mobilizing the discontented rank and file against it … and to force the workers back under [their] arbitrary direction … which means under the control of the employers.” But the militant autocrat and peculiar Republican who spawned the CIO was not so sure that union democracy was such a good idea. “It is a question of whether you desire your organization to be the most effective instrumentality …,” as John L. Lewis unabashedly put it at a UMW convention in 1936, “or whether you prefer to sacrifice the efficiency of your organization in some respects for a little more academic freedom.”
Dave Beck, president of the Teamsters, had a word or two to say on the issue also: “Unions,” he said, “are big business. Why should truck drivers and bottle washers be allowed to make big decisions affecting union policy? Would any corporation allow it?”
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- Information
- Left OutReds and America's Industrial Unions, pp. 159 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002