Labor Movements: the Good and the Bad

Watching the remarkable movie The Irishman wakened many memories of growing up in the 1950s in a family of union men and labor organizers. In 1957 at the age of 10 I went to Washington DC with my father and sat in on the McClellan Hearings which targeted mob influence in the unions. Bobby Kennedy, famously, was waging war against Hoffa and others. I didn't know what was going on but I did shake hands with John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey and I saw Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and a political who's-who of the 1950-60s. I vividly recall that the assembly erupted into laughter and my father explained: Walter Reuther was loquaciously answering a question when Goldwater said: "I must interrupt since I have forgotten the question you are answering." I was familiar with the three most prominent labor leaders of the time and now see that they represent distinct movements in labor: Jimmy Hoffa, Walter Reuther and George Meany. Let's contrast the three and the labor movement post-Sexual-Revolution.

Jimmy Hoffa, of course, represents the mob influence which was infamously powerful close to our home in New Jersey. Think Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) in On the Waterfront and of course his priest antagonist (Karl Malden) based upon the real waterfront priest John Corridan S.J. The book Waterfront Priest was a staple in our home and given to my father for his work as a union leader with the Labor Institute in Jersey City.

UAW's Walter Reuther represented the strongest possible contrast to the unionism of Teamster Jimmy Hoffa. He was a brilliant, courageous, flawlessly moral idealist of the left. In his youth he flirted with communism, working for two years in a factory in 1930s Stalinist Russia. Later he became anti-communist and purged the unions of that influence. He was an early and fervent supporter of the Civil Rights (he and my own father were at the "I Have a Dream" speech; my Dad was impressed, but less idealistic than Reuther, he left the march to see a movie with a colleague) and Farm Worker movements. Reuther represents the union movement as idealistic, fierce in pursuit of social justice, largely secular, and left-wing. Think Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. I don't recall my Dad speaking of him with any obvious approval or displeasure, but he seemed to respect him as well as other secular (many Jewish) colleagues who cooperated happily with Catholics like my father in that era.

Leader of the AFL-CIO George Meany, by contrast, was a meat-and-potato, Catholic unionist more in keeping with our family's values. His unionism focused on the concerns (wage, health benefits, safety, etc.) of the working man and was: anti-communist, pro-capitalism, pro-America, and fiercely if inarticulately, pro-family and pro-life. It was less idealistic, more limited and practical in its focus. It was carried from one success to another in that explosive American economy of 1950-65.  It was basically the same down-to-earth unionism I faced in the Teamster union in my own career in UPS management from 1985-2003. Like our UPS founder Jim Casey, I always appreciated the relationship with the union, notwithstanding the tension and conflict. For instance, as dispatcher of drivers, I found that my best friend was the shop steward who would mediate the inevitable disputes with drivers who thought they were wronged.

Post-1970, the labor movement, with the entire US left, underwent a substantial change as it embraced the cultural liberalism of the sexual revolution: abortion, radical feminism as deconstruction of masculinity/femininity, the explicit break with traditions of moral and religious authority, and the sundering of sexuality from fruitfulness and family. The legacy of Hoffa diminished (for the most part), that of Reuther continued with energy, but the quiet Catholic values of George Meany were cast aside as rubbish.

Catholic labor leaders like my father and uncles survived the Depression, faced down the company goons on the picket lines, defeated the communists for control of the unions, beat the Nazi and Japanese empires, contained and overcame the communism of the USSR, built the strongest economy in human history, maintained the post-war Pax Americana, and developed a dazzling Church network of schools, hospitals, parishes and religious orders. Their only failing: unprepared for the Sexual Revolution, they feebly surrendered the entire liberal order to the sexual libertines.

The unions have been, of course, battered by titanic, globalizing economic changes over the last 50 years, but a particular concern for many Catholics has been the alliance of the teacher's unions with the DNC in defense of the monopoly of tax funding for public schools in defiance of the rights of parents and communities of faith. The responsibility for education rests primarily with families and their communities of faith and the hostility of the Left to their rights is a grave matter of social justice.

An additional problem with the alliance of unions with the Democrats is that municipalities in places like NJ have granted extremely generous contracts, in exchange for political support, to unions for police, firemen and teachers. This has bankrupted local governments. This fiscal issue is of little concern to me personally as it is: first of all, only about money; and, more importantly, the work of teacher and policeman and fireman is so valuable that it serves us to reward them and attract the best talent.

In an industrial society, the union is something sacred to us as Catholics. Formerly, unions were vulnerable to the mob and the communists; today they are in bed with the libertines. It is a sadness!