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**DECEMBER 17, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

The Saddest Union Story

As the longtime president of the United Auto Workers, Walter Reuther was
the seminal figure in making the UAW not only the greatest American
union, but also the only social democratic institution in U.S. history
to wield real power. Through its pattern bargaining with what were then
the Big Three auto companies, the UAW raised the mid-century incomes of
American workers to levels previously unheard of; won them benefits
equally without precedent; funded many of the crucial campaigns of the
civil rights movement; seeded with early funding the Students for a
Democratic Society, the National Organization for Women, and the first
Earth Day; and campaigned-unsuccessfully, alas-for Medicare for All
and worker co-control of corporations.

Personally, Reuther was a puritan, who also strongly believed that union
leaders should enjoy the same living standards as their members-and
nothing more. When the industrial unions of the CIO, of which he was
also president, merged with the AFL, it created a clash of union leader
lifestyles. The more, shall we say, relaxed leaders of the AFL weren't
averse to the more sybaritic jaunts and haunts to which they believed
their positions entitled them. This led to continuing disputes between
Reuther and other members of the unified AFL-CIO board on such issues as
where to conduct their yearly winter meetings, which the pre-merger AFL
had customarily held in swank Miami Beach hotels, much to Reuther's
horror. At one board meeting to determine the location of the next
winter meeting, Reuther exploded. "Do you really want to wallow in
luxury like a bunch of capitalists?" he asked.

The opposing viewpoint in this debate was immediately put forth by
Bricklayers President Harry Bates. "Yeah," said Bates, whereupon the
board promptly approved Bates's position.

I thought of this encounter earlier this week when the Justice
Department reached a settlement

with a much-diminished UAW. A multiyear Justice investigation had
uncovered a host of illegal violations by UAW leaders, including by two
recent past presidents who had misappropriated union funds to finance a
lavish lifestyle that included winter digs in Palm Springs and
cross-country golf excursions. The two presidents have pleaded guilty to
embezzlement, and roughly a dozen other former officials have had
similar charges brought against them.

The settlement won't involve having the feds conducting strict
oversight over the UAW, as they did for three decades over the
Teamsters, which institutionally had racketeering charges brought
against it. (Institutionally, the Teamsters were in bed with the Mafia,
while the UAW was merely prey to its officers' own greed.) But a
court-appointed monitor will serve as a watchdog over the UAW for the
next six years.

The two main factions that built the UAW in the 1930s and
'40s-Reuther's social democrats and their communist-dominated
opposition-were both comprised of highly talented idealists who saw
the union as a vehicle to build a more egalitarian America. They
attracted like idealists from both the shop floor and university
campuses, and, even when fighting each other tooth and nail, they won
more significant victories for American workers than any other
institution before or since. What they couldn't arrest was the
offshoring of the industry and the deindustrialization of the American
economy, which reduced the UAW's membership from 1.5 million at its
peak to 400,000 today, and subjected the wages and benefits of its
remaining members to ferocious downward pressure. The loss in members
and clout was slowly matched by the loss in the elan that Reuther and
the union's early leaders had once brought to the UAW, though the
union always had and still has a number of excellent and militant
officials and staffers. But it also has had leaders who, as Reuther put
it, managed to "wallow in luxury like a bunch of capitalists"-on the
union's dime.

There are sadder stories about American workers, but few sadder ones
about unions.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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