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Canadian Machinists and the NDP
In August 1961 Canadian GVP Mike Rygus led a sizeable delegation
of IAM members into the founding convention of the New Democratic
Party (NDP) in Canada. Meeting in Ottawa's Coliseum, affiliates of
Canadian Labour Congress unions joined with delegates representing
Canada's Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)--an agrarian
protest movement that swept the prairies during the 1903's
Depression--to launch a challenge against the two existing major
parties.
In reporting on the NDP's founding, the Machinist
explained to U.S. readers "that the Canadian parliamentary system
makes working through existing parties fruitless. The system requires
members of the House of Commons to vote, not their own views, but the
official position of their party." Lacking influence in the older
parties, Canadian unions decided to form a broadly-based people's
political movement embracing farmers, workers, consumers,
professionals and others seeking basic social reform. Although the NDP
failed to achieve majority status in the national Parliament, it
became the most influential of the third parties in Canada,
consistently winning between 15 and 20% of the poplar vote. NDP
pressure from the left has influenced policy decisions by both major
parties. The NDP has also won elections in British Columbia and
Saskatchewan, where it launched a health insurance program that became
a model for the rest of Canada.
A New Day for Federal Employees
The IAM's first lodge of federal employees, Local Lodge 174 in
Washington, D.C., was organized in 1891, but federal employees did not
have a right to join unions prior to enactment of the Lloyd-LaFollette
Act in 1912. Even then, unions of government workers had no power to
bargain collectively. A few agencies, notably the Interior Department
and the Government Printing Office, agreed to informal consultation
with employee organizations, but fro the most part unions of federal
employees shad to seek improvements in the working conditions of men
and women employed by Uncle Sam through legislative action.
With so many members at Navy yards, Army arsenals and other
military and civilian agencies, the IAM began early to lobby Congress
on behalf of its members. As previously noted, delegates representing
government employees at a District 44 Convention in Denver in 1909
picked William H. Johnston to serve as a full-time lobbyist in
Washington. Over the next half century he and succeeding presidents of
District 44, notably Nick Alifas and William Ryan, helped to bring
about the Eight-Hour Work Day Law, the Federal Employees Injury
Compensation Act, increases in Government wage rates and laws
governing such other benefits as sick leave, health and life
insurance, annual leave and pensions.
Though unions of skilled craft workers could demand management's
attention on projects of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of
Engineers and similar federal activities around the country, labor
relations were usually something of a joke in the federal service. For
many years employees had a right to join unions, but supervisors could
ignore them at will. In January 1962 John F. Kennedy changed the
course of labor relations in the Federal Government when he issued
Executive Order 10988 establishing the right of federal
employees to form and join unions without "interference,
restraint, coercion or discrimination." Although denying
recognition to any union asserting a right to strike against the
government. Kennedy's order was a milestone in that it directed
federal agencies to recognize unions representing a majority of
employees. By providing for negotiated contracts between unions and
agency heads it removed employees from the mercy of arbitrary
supervisors. In time the order's basic flaw, lack of effective
enforcement procedures, became clear. However, by legitimizing
collective bargaining in federal agencies it encouraged union growth
in the federal sector and cleared the way for the statutory
protections that came later for federal unions.
Sweet Times and Sour Notes
On the surface America's economy bustled with prosperity in the
Kennedy years. Shiny new gas-guzzlers jammed a spreading network of
interstate highways. At the edge of every city miles of new detached
housing--"the American dream"--sprouted like mushrooms,
transforming farmlands into burgeoning suburbs. The stock market
boomed as production, profits and dividends soared. The gross national
product rose steadily toward the $600 billion a year mark. Yet in the
midst of this apparent prosperity unemployment and poverty persisted.
As automation increased output per man hour in steel, autos, mining
and other basic industries fewer workers were needed each year. With
the tidal wage of the post-war baby boom about to break upon the
job market, unemployment continued to hover between 5.5% and 6.5%.
While there were more millionaires than ever studies found that 20
million families earned less than the $6,000 a year needed to achieve
minimum standards of health and decency in the Kennedy prosperity. The
persistence of unemployment in the midst of plenty, together with
rapid advances in technology, increased the importance of job security
in union negotiations. In preparing for the 1962 round of negotiations
with the aerospace industry in February, the IAM and UAW made a second
attempt to set common objectives in a joint "price tag"
conference. Leaders from both unions put employment security at the
top of the list.
In actual negotiations this priority was often submerged by
other issues. As long as rank-and-file members remained employed they
tended to be more interested in tangible immediate rewards than
theoretical future safeguards. Given the choice between better wages
at once and less severance pay or supplemental unemployment benefits
later, most were willing to let the future take care of itself. This
gap, between leadership perceptions and rank-and-file preferences was
minor compared to the far more serious, and unexpected, gap revealed
by the 1962-63 round of aerospace negotiations.
After months of hard bargaining on both sides, punctuated by a
couple of strikes in which the President invoked Taft-Hartley's
cooling off provisions, negotiations remained deadlocked in much of
the industry. The major sticking point was the union shop. With
militant unionists already printing picket signs and preparing to
close down the aerospace industry from Cape Canaveral to Vanderberg
the President appointed a blue ribbon mediation panel to keep
America's space programs in orbit.
In its report the panel recommended that the companies agree to
the union shop if it won approval by a vote of no less than two-thirds
of the bargaining unit. When top aerospace executives scoffed at this
solution reporters asked Kennedy to comment at this next press
conference. He defended the panel and the union shop, noting that
unlike aerospace "most industrial companies in the United States
accepted the union shop many years ago--the steel industry, the auto
industry, the aluminum companies, other basic industries. The union
shop is part of collective bargaining." Soon thereafter General
Dynamics/Convair and North American agreed to let their employees vote
on the union shop. When the ballots were counted, both the IAM and
General Dynamics Convair and the UAW at North American failed to
muster the necessary two-thirds majority. Though the 55% margin in
favor of the union shop in both elections would have been considered
an easy victory in a political contest, the outcome was a shock to the
labor movement. It was an early warning of a fundamental change that
had taken place since the time when unions routinely won union shop
elections by margins of 90% or more. It signaled the arrival of a new
generation of working men and women, a generation with dim
recollections of the Depression and no remembrance of work laces
without unions. It also indicated the extent to which the McClellan
hearings had damaged the image of unionism in America.
By 1963 the IAM was running hard to merely stand still. New
shops were still being organized. Few issues of the Machinist
failed to note the success of at least one organizing campaign or
representation elections. However, the units were generally small,
seldom adding more than fifty or a hundred new members. With a few
notable exceptions, like IBM and Dupont, most of American's large
corporations were either organized by this time or able to hide behind
union-restricting legislation in right-to-work-for-less states.
The impact of automation and foreign imports, compounded by a
slump in aerospace and continued disappearance of jobs in railroading
could not be offset by new organizing. The membership gains of the
'50's began to evaporate in Hayes' final term. Membership plunged from
852,000 to 800,000 between June 1961 and January 1964.* However, as
the union prepared to celebrate its 75th Anniversary in May 1963 the
IAM was widely recognized as one of the world's largest, strongest and
most respected trade unions. The IAM's 75th year was marked by
proclamations, banquets, speakers, dances and other ceremonies
sponsored by local and district lodges and state councils throughout
the country. The high point in these commemorative exercises was
reached on the evening of May 5 when an overflow crowd of 2,500
gathered in Washington's larges hotel ballroom to celebrate the IAM's
Diamond Jubilee.
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