Meet Your CIO Neighbors

More than ever before, events in the year 1946 taught organized la­bor the importance of public support. At the beginning of the year, unions waged a long battle for much-needed pay increases. By the sum­mer, they were locked in a losing struggle to maintain price controls while launching attacks against their own members who deviated from the liberal political line. A decisive Republican victory in the congres­sional elections in November culminated a frustrating year for unions and prepared the ground for the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. A la­bor movement that had come to rely on liberal government awoke to the fact that its public support was diminishing rapidly.

The labor press issued repeated calls for union members to recap­ture the good will of their local communities. Wisconsin CIO vice-president Malcolm Lloyd, UAW leader Victor Reuther, and Interna­tional Ladies Garment Workers Union education director Mark Starr all suggested better labor-community relations was the first key step in reversing trade unionism's political and economic fortunes.¹ Min­neapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey put it most emphatically: "Labor must first become a part of its community—of all the organizations and enterprises that go to make up the life of a community—the PTA's, the Community Chest, the School Boards, the City Planning groups, and all the rest. Labor must show that it wants a good com­munity." Unions must also remember, continued Humphrey, that "they must sell themselves to the farmers, the white collar workers and businessmen. This requires work and education not only in the union hall, but in the clubs and farm meetings."²

Despite the gloomy events of 1946, organized labor had a solid community base upon which to build. Indeed, the mixed reaction of many towns and cities to the postwar strike wave sent no resound­ing message to either labor or business. Unions still had a reservoir of good will from their wartime community activities. Furthermore, many local unions and labor councils had plans to expand the range of their services and increase the level of their participation in their home towns. Labor's efforts at the community level, then, comple­mented its program to develop a union consciousness among its rank and file.

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The community support labor received during the strike wave of 1945-46 dramatized just how far unionism's influence had spread since the emergence of the New Deal. In many towns and cities, groups that had formerly been friendly to industry ignored the in­conveniences caused by work stoppages and took the side of the workers. Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corporation reported that in one of its plant communities, small businessmen aligned themselves with the strikers. Up and down almost every business street, placards placed in saloons, stores and shops proclaimed sympathy for the men on strike. Similarly, in Three Rivers, Michigan, over one hundred businessmen and professionals signed advertisements supporting workers in their struggle against the Fairbanks Morse Company. Fif­ty prominent Cleveland citizens marked the one-hundredth day of the Westinghouse strike by sending telegrams to the company urg­ing settlement, and the traditionally conservative Newark Evening News held the company alone responsible for the continuation of the struggle.³

These strikes revealed the limitations of corporate industrial rela­tions policies that relied on the community to discipline recalcitrant workers. During the thirties, the Remington Rand Company's Mo­hawk Valley Formula had defeated strikes with a strategy that com­bined police intimidation and court injunctions with propaganda campaigns that turned local communities against workers. In 1947, however, the company discovered a change in the political and so­cial climate of its plant cities. For the first time, Tonawandas, New York, local leaders failed to support Remington Rand's policies; com­munity officials refused to blame workers for strikes, and police au­thorities denied assistance to the company's attempts to cross the picketline. Aware of labor's increased political clout, the mayor dra­matically reversed his predecessor's practices and maintained a strictly neutral position. The normally antiunion Evening News, which in past struggles had forecast dire predictions of plant shutdowns, was also unusually restrained in its editorial policies.⁴

Elsewhere, local officials moved beyond neutrality. The mayors of Pittsburgh and Cleveland publicly backed organized labor against the Westinghouse Corporation. Cleveland city Councilman Richard Masterson and mayoral aide James McSweeney participated in a mock funeral burying a rejected Westinghouse offer, leading the United Electrical Workers Union to express delight at the "most unusual dis­play of public support for a strike."⁵ In Anderson, Indiana, Mayor C. D. Rotruck employed financially strapped UAW strikers in the city park department, furnished lighting for the picket stations, and ap­pointed UAW members to two vacancies on the city council. In many communities, public and private welfare agencies also provided as­sistance to strikers. When Francis H. Wendt, mayor of Racine, Wis­consin, interceded on behalf of J. I. Case Company workers, the com­pany president, L. R. Clausen, accused him of "partisanship" and decried his "failure to act as a public official in behalf of all the citi­zens of Racine."⁶

Hostility from the community during the 1946 strike was a "shock­ing surprise" to General Electric. The company had felt secure in the belief that it ranked high as a good employer and good neighbor. But at many strike sites, clergymen joined the picket line while local merchants ran ads criticizing the firm for prolonging the strike. Sev­eral stores even removed GE products from their shelves. In some locations, city councils passed resolutions on behalf of the United Electrical Workers Union. General Electric believed that these un­friendly acts resulted from widespread distrust and misunderstand­ing not only of General Electric but of business in general. A survey conducted during the strike confirmed the company's fears. Commu­nity neighbors charged that "wages are as low as G.E. can possibly keep them; prices are kept as high as G.E. can push them; G.E. profits are unwarranted or excessive; G.E. has no concern for the welfare of its employees; G.E. has no interest in its plant communities." Final­ly, and most troubling, the company discovered that its plant com­munities believed that "G.E.'s motives are dishonest and contrary to public interest."⁷

Labor's wartime patriotic activity as well as a lingering distrust of business help explain support for strikers. Participation in war bond drives, scrap salvage drives, and Red Cross and United War Chest cam­paigns boosted the presence of organized labor in communities across the country. Philadelphia unions, for instance, dedicated themselves to the war effort. Union leaders, as well as thousands of members of the rank and file, gave generously of their time and money on be­half of wartime charitable agencies. Built and operated by trade unionists, the USO-Labor Plaza, one of the city's most popular recreation centers for service personnel, served as a visible example of la­bor's commitment to victory. These efforts won the local labor move­ment numerous accolades from community leaders and the press.⁸ Similarly, in Tonawandas, New York, the site of the Remington Rand strike, the AFL and the CIO formed a new organization, the United Labor Council, to facilitate trade union voluntary activity. This or­ganization helped give labor an increased voice in the town's civic affairs. In early 1946, after evaluating labor's behavior during the war, Charles Cooper, a UE Local 308 officer, declared that "labor in Tonawandas has earned a right to community support."⁹

During the war, the development of closer cooperation between labor and social welfare agencies enhanced the effectiveness of union patriotic activity while strengthening organized labor's prestige within the community. Previously, organized labor often had little contact with these agencies. In most communities, business and profession­al people controlled the policy-making boards of governmental and voluntary organizations. In 1940, for instance, only ninety CIO rep­resentatives served on the boards of the many thousands of local, state, and national health and welfare bodies in America. Business leaders also took credit for most of the funds contributed to such voluntary agencies as the Community Chest and the Red Cross through either private donations or corporate fund-raising campaigns. Workers, meanwhile, resented both the solicitation process, which in many companies was largely a "shake-down" affair with a fore­man ordering employees to "fork over," and management's claims of full credit for their gifts. Antagonism typically characterized the relationship between workers and the social service agency staffs, who often identified with the business and professional classes and as­sumed an attitude of paternalistic benevolence toward those in need, barely hiding their suspicion and distaste for unions.¹⁰

Mobilization for war began to break down old barriers. Just before the United States' entry into the conflict, the CIO and the AFL devel­oped war relief committees to aid workers in countries fighting Fas­cism, to provide special services for America's armed forces, and to meet the needs of America's defense workers. In 1942, the government's War Relief Control Board encouraged combining all war-related appeals into one coordinated drive administered by a single, newly created agen­cy, the National War Fund. With the assistance of the National War Fund, the Red Cross, the Community Chests and Councils of Ameri­ca, and numerous smaller agencies began pooling fund-raising and relief efforts.¹¹ Labor committees reached a national agreement to co­operate with the Community Chests and Red Cross in return for substantial funds to the AFL and CIO committees to facilitate their work. This agreement also called for labor representation on all governing boards, campaigns, and allocation committees. The agencies promised to publicly credit unions for worker contributions and to encourage solicitation by joint employer-union committees.¹²

The war, then, provided the labor movement with the opportuni­ty and resources to begin integrating itself into community service networks. At the national level, the AFL and the CIO built a cooper­ative relationship with the top leadership of important health and welfare agencies, in particular the Community Chests and Councils, Inc. At the local level, AFL and especially CIO committees, working closely with their community counterparts in fund-raising campaigns, gained representation on community and war chest boards of direc­tors. By 1945, for instance, Ohio unions led the country in board participation with 109 CIO representatives.¹³

National War Fund agencies provided the CIO's War Relief Com­mittee with an annual operating budget of almost $600,000, enabling the committee to move beyond fund-raising to establish an outreach organization, the Division of Community Services. This division set up regional offices throughout the country and organized fifty state and city industrial union council community services committees, which were responsible for working with community agencies on programs of service to industrial workers on nonfactory local prob­lems. These committees initiated the union counselling programs, discussed in an earlier chapter, which were expanded after the war. During the 1945-46 strike wave, unions drew on the relationships established with both public and private agencies to secure health and welfare services for strikers. At the request of the United Steel Workers, for example, the Buffalo and Erie County Council of Social Agencies provided a counselling and information service in union halls during the steel strike.¹⁴

The wartime rapprochement of labor and community agencies au­gured well for the CIO's postwar plans. In late 1945, the national Community Chest's Committee on Future Relations with Organized Labor proposed that local chests support labor community services committees in the same way they funded organizations like the YMCA. The report argued that health and welfare agencies could not afford to ignore labor, for unions were "a basic sociological necessity in a free society such as ours, not merely a colossal 'grab bag.'" Moreover, their "permanency may well prove to be a very vital feature of the continu­ing health and stability of our industrial progress."¹* Encouraged, in early 1946, the CIO proposed a yearly budget of $240,000 for its National CIO Community Services Committee. The Chest's National Bud­get Committee gave tentative approval to the CIO's request and then passed it on to be considered by local community chests, which would actually raise and allocate the funds.¹⁶

The commitment of local community agencies to the CIO, how­ever, was more fragile than an alarmed business community realized. Despite strong support from the National Chest's board, president and staff, the majority of local chest leaders refused to endorse the na­tional organization's plan. Leo Pedis, national director of the CIO's Committee, disappointedly acknowledged that although communi­ty chests and organized labor had come to know each other better during the war, "some very real fears and some deeply ingrained prej­udices still remain." He also suspected that lurking behind the local chests' refusal to fund the CIO Community Services Committee were business leaders. The professional social workers who comprised lo­cal chest staff routinely reported to boards of laymen often controlled by industrialists. Pedis charged that some "financially powerful lay leaders," disturbed by recent industrial unrest and by the assistance given strikers by some social service agencies, had brought "great influence... to bear upon the insecure shoulders of some commu­nity chest leaders." As a result, Pedis bitterly concluded, "doubts, fears and prejudices won out—at least for the present."¹⁷

Out of this impasse between the national and local bodies of the Community Chest over the form and level of the institutional rela­tionship with labor came a compromise. The national organization agreed that rather than provide direct financial support to the CIO's Community Relations Committee, it would set up a small Labor-Em­ployee Participation Department. The department would serve as a liaison between the National Chest and organized labor and would promote the active participation of unions in the health and wel­fare activities of local communities. In addition, the National Chest encouraged local chests or councils of social agencies to hire special labor staff to set up advisory labor participation committees. Further­more, the department gave unions the power to choose labor staff persons who would represent the interests of the AFL and the CIO, but the Community Chest would pay their salaries. The Communi­ty Chests and Councils Inc. launched the Labor-Employee Participa­tion Department in January 1947, but as late as 1955 local coordi­nating councils for private social agencies employed only fifty-two full-time labor representatives.¹⁸

During 1946, without the financial support of the Community Chests and Councils, Inc., the CIO had to practically dismantle its National Community Services Committee. The Committee's budget dropped from its wartime peak of over $500,000 a year to $12,500. Limited funds forced it to liquidate all its regional offices. Leo Perlis later recalled, "We had to start, in a very large sense, from scratch."¹⁹

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Starting from scratch meant defining the broad goals that would characterize the CIO's community service program for the next de­cade. First, the CIO wanted to ensure that all workers gained access to health, welfare, and recreational services. Second, the CIO hoped to establish a positive image of labor in the community. Extending trade unionism beyond the plant gates and job-centered objectives would help establish unions as important mainstream civic organi­zations. Moreover, by integrating itself into the community, the CIO hoped to demonstrate that unions were not like selfish special inter­est groups but instead were concerned "about the welfare of the com­munity" as a whole. A strengthened, more politically powerful union movement would be the byproduct of labor's improved image. Jo­seph A. Beirne of the Communications Workers contended, "looked at most crassly, community service is one way of convincing one's fellow citizens that a union's economic program, legislative program, political action program or organizing program is deserving at least of thoughtful consideration if not outright support." Community service, he continued, might "make our political action and legisla­tive work a little easier, and thereby make our collective bargaining and grievance work a little easier."²⁰

Without its large wartime budget, the national CIO Community Services Committee acted primarily as a policy-making and facilitat­ing body. It served as a liaison between the CIO and the national or­ganizations in the health and welfare field such as the chests and the Red Cross. The committee emphasized mobilizing local trade union­ists for civic activism and acted as a clearinghouse for information and guidance on programs and policies. Initially, despite the gains made during the war, it was difficult to interest some labor officials in social welfare services. They viewed the CSC as being removed from the main­stream of union activity. But, gradually during the late forties, under the leadership of the National CIO Community Services Committee, city level industrial union councils and local unions across the coun­try began to set up community services committees.²¹

Community services committees pursued a variety of programs that promoted unions in the community. Illinois labor activities can serve as an example of the growing presence of organized labor. In 1947, Chicago United Packinghouse Workers Local 28 organized a Boy's Club that was operated out of the union hall. At the same time, in a Chicago neighborhood, UAW CSC members formed a Commu­nity Council that succeeded in improving street lighting, reducing traffic hazards, and industrial smoke nuisances. Locals across the state established blood banks and held blood procurement drives. During times of crisis, the local committees stepped in to aid their fellow citizens; in the spring and summer of 1952, when major floods hit East Moline and Rockford, Illinois, local CSCs aided in evacuation, housing, and collection of food, money, clothing, and furnishings. The Rockford social service agencies publicly commended the trade unionists for their actions. Elsewhere in the country, unions partici­pated in similar activities, sponsoring little league teams, operating dancehalls for teenagers, and giving Christmas parties for needy com­munity children.²²

Fund-raising for voluntary health and welfare agencies helped or­ganized labor demonstrate good citizenship. At the national level, leaders of major trade unions, like David J. McDonald of the Steel-workers, served on national fund-raising committees. At the city level, local industrial union councils set up labor participation committees that cooperated with business committees and agency personnel to decide on labor's fair share of the fund-raising campaign goal and to work out campaign procedures. Where good labor-management re­lations existed within the plant, union counselors often worked with supervisory staff in soliciting funds or pledges. In all cases, unions were committed to giving without coercion but, in turn, demanded full credit for labor's role in raising money.²³

With organized labor's assistance, the level of workers' contribu­tions to charity increased significantly. In 1950, Detroit UAW Local 600 alone raised 10 percent of the city's $8 million Torch Fund Cam­paign. That same year, Akron workers' gifts totaled 36 percent of all money collected. The 1953 National CIO Community Services Com­mittee annual report proudly announced that CIO members had over the past twelve years contributed more than $400 million to volun­tary agencies.²⁴

To ensure that workers had access to the health and welfare ser­vices that they supported, local community services committees sought labor representation on the boards and committees that gov­erned social agencies. These ranged from the tax-supported public welfare and health departments to the community chest-supported family and children's agencies, settlement houses, Red Cross and Salvation Army chapters, Boy and Girl Scouts, and the YW and YMCA. The CIO argued that since workers supported these agencies with their tax dollars and their voluntary contributions, labor had a right to participate directly in the policy-making and budget decisions of these organizations. Essentially, union members would represent the consumer of welfare services. Their participation would help "democ­ratize" social agencies, making them more representative of the com­munity and more responsive to popular needs.²⁵

Unionists believed that labor's participation would help reduce the influence of business over social agencies. On the one hand, unions could protect sympathetic social workers from undue pressure applied by the large donors from the business community. In 1950, the Ohio CIO's CSC observed that "sometimes social workers, who are liberal in their view or friendly to Labor, are subjected to coercive treatment by reactionary givers and the presence of Labor representation can as­sure them a greater measure of security." On the other hand, union community activism could help develop an appreciation of the labor movement among indifferent or even hostile social workers. In 1953, for example, Treva Berger, the chairman of the Illinois Lake County Community Services Committee, recalled that her committee had worked closely with a director of the Public Aid Commission. Impressed with the CIO CSC program, this director had helped change "entire­ly" the minds of the members of the Council of Social Agencies "about people in unions and in [the] CIO in particular."²⁶

Unions succeeded in increasing labor representation on social and welfare agency boards and committees. Whereas only 90 CIO mem­bers sat on agency boards at the beginning of World War II, by 1953, 15,000 CIO members served in various capacities with national, state, and local welfare organizations. To a lesser degree, AFL unions also provided representatives to the agencies. Still, even this level of rep­resentation was only a beginning. In 1953, in Chicago alone, 5,000 citizens made up the agency boards, making the 140 CIO volunteers seem almost insignificant.²⁷

The CIO hoped that increased participation in the administration and funding of community agencies would pay off during labor con­flict. Even financially strong unions were unable to fully support strik­ers. A cooperative social service sector, however, could strengthen immeasurably labor's ability to sustain a long-term work stoppage by providing relief for workers. The CIO National Community Services Committees sought to ensure that assistance was given on the basis of need, regardless of the cause, as "a community responsibility to its citizens."²⁸ The CIO recognized, however, that the extent to which community welfare agencies within their legal and financial means willingly gave assistance to strikers was a measure of the communi­ty's acceptance of the principle of the strike as a lawful step in the collective bargaining process. Here the changing image of labor and the degree to which unions had established prior relationships within the community came into play. The CIO increasingly found that so­cial agencies were more "responsive to a union which is a vital and integral part of the fabric of daily community life."²⁹

As strikes approached, the CIO Community Services strike assistance program swung into action. At the plant level, a strike steering com­mittee appointed and arranged for the training of strike counselors who referred workers in need to appropriate social agencies. In some plants the work of strike counselors meshed with the established union coun­selling program, another important CSC activity. Union representatives then met with local public and private agencies to set up procedures for relief and to make certain that social workers understood their re­sponsibility to workers on strike.³⁰ In 1952, the Labor Participation Department of the Community Chest asserted that "to the credit of many social agencies" many communities accepted the principle of need as the basic eligibility for assistance. Unions, like the Amalgam­ated Clothing Workers, the UAW, and the Steel workers credited the CSC's strike programs for sustaining prolonged labor struggles. The United Steelworkers, for instance, noted that the strike relief program contributed to the successful conclusion of its 1952 strike, until then, the longest in the union's history.³¹

Although the CIO did not intend for its CSC to be a political force, the quest to improve community welfare or to gain access to servic­es at times pushed local committees into the political arena. While supporting voluntary agencies, the CIO contended that security for all could be achieved only through an activist government. More­over, it considered government agencies responsible for the major burden of financial assistance during unemployment and strikes.³² Again, the example of unions in Illinois suggests the range of CSC political activity. During 1952, faced with Korean-War induced in­flation, community service committees in such Illinois towns as Al­ton, Moline, and Galesburg led the political struggle to maintain rent control. In Chicago, the CSC fought for increases in workmen's com­pensation, for funds to build a tuberculosis sanitarium, for a liberal­ization of residency requirements for public assistance, and for state aid for slum clearance and public housing. The CIO CSC in East Mo­line helped guarantee access to public relief for the unemployed by electing six CIO people to the Town Board responsible for approving relief expenditures. During strikes, political power was even more important. In 1953, Kenawee, Aurora, and Freeport township super­visors initially refused to provide assistance to needy strikers and their families. Pressure from community services committees eventually reversed the policy. Chester Winski of the ACWA reported a change "after the Township Supervisor had been properly educated."³³

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Community services was the core of labor's slowly growing local-level public relations campaign. Political failure in the 1946, 1950, and 1952 national campaigns had convinced many trade unionists that they were laboring "in a climate that is completely hostile to our point of view." By the early fifties, both the AFL and the CIO believed that unions needed to change the climate of opinion in America.

Consequently, both houses of organized labor launched national-level public relations programs to promote labor and liberalism. The CIO, in particular, complemented national efforts by targeting more localized public relations activities. It believed that business penetra­tion into the community helped shape the political atmosphere. The CIO urged local unions to compete with business by trumpeting la­bor's contributions and point of view within the community.³⁴

Community services served as a public relations function by trans­mitting a subtle message to the community, one that attempted to establish unions as useful, responsible, and civic-minded organiza­tions. For the CIO, the beauty of this program was that it allowed unions to demonstrate through their actions the "mutuality of in­terest" between labor and the public. Henry Fieisher, National CIO Director of Publicity, consistently urged local unionists to take ad­vantage of all the potential goodwill that could be generated by pub­licizing their community service work. He advised CSC representa­tives at a 1953 institute to "cultivate newspaper [sk\ and radio contacts" and furnish them with "good human interest stories." Union insistence on receiving credit for its fund-raising activities and contributions was another manifestation of labor's drive to gain com­munity goodwill and acceptance.³⁵

As part of its efforts to alter the local community's perception of unionism, organized labor realized the potential benefits of commu­nicating directly with the public. The UAW encouraged its districts to organize speakers' bureaus and offered the services of the national union's Education Department in providing resource materials and training. International Harvester UAW Local 6 of Melrose Park, Illinois, energetically attacked the task of changing public opinion; its officers spoke regularly before high school social sciences classes, college groups, and gatherings of ministers. In June 1950, as part of its public relations program, the Michigan CIO Council began mailing CIO lit­erature on economic and political issues to key people, including min­isters and educators, throughout the state. Reverend Walfred Erickson of the First Baptist Church in Lawton, Michigan, admitted that his sympathies were not "one hundred per cent pro-union," but appreci­ated receiving material which represented "fairly and fully the union viewpoint on the issues which confront us as citizens." Another Bap­tist minister, Reverend Robert D. Hotelling of Midland, Michigan, found it "healthy to hear of a different viewpoint than that consis­tently maintained by the NAM and the Chamber of Commerce."³⁶

The CIO Council in Grand Rapids, Michigan, worried about the "many misrepresentations about the CIO," introduced itself to the community through a widely distributed pamphlet entitled "Meet Your CIO Neighbors." The pamphlet pointed out that the "CIO isn't just a bunch of initials. It isn't something far away. CIO is your neigh­bor, or the fellow who lives down the block; the family next to you at church, your friend in the club, or your fellow straphanger on the bus."³⁷ Similarly, beginning in 1949, CIO unions across the Midwest began reaching out to neighboring farmers by sponsoring exhibits at highly popular state and county fairs. Relief from the hot sun or rain, free cold drinking water, movies, "gimmicks," including quiz shows and raffles, and giveaways, like shopping bags or balloons with a union imprint, promoted attendance at the CIO fair tents. In one tent, Michigan CIO Council representatives strategically placed near the drinking fountain a large display chart illustrating the compara­tive incomes of farmers, big businessmen and the "middle men." The unionists reported that "this chart caused considerable comment." Farmers left the CIO exhibits with literature pointing out the close relationship between farm income and high wages for workers. One CIO Education Committee Chairman summed up his comments on his union's fair booth this way: "We don't feel that we can expect to convert people to CIO thinking in the few minutes we can hold them in the tent. For that reason, we feel that the entertainment we pro­vided was important as a means of breaking down prejudice and pre­paring the way for a little more sympathetic feeling toward [the] CIO" and for a "more receptive audience to a year-round program of pub­lic relations."³⁸

In most cases, however, unions equated public relations principally with the mass media. Radio and later television provided a point of contact not only with the union membership but with the broader public as well. Increasingly, as the postwar corporate antilabor assault intensified, AFL and CIO locals and city councils began sponsoring programs "geared at showing the ordinary citizen just what unions are and how they benefit the community." In 1946, for example, Lan­sing, Michigan, UAW locals began a radio program "Labor Speaks," initially to support the autoworkers' strike against General Motors. Maintained as a regular offering after the struggle, it brought labor's point of view on economic and political issues to union members and the public. In 1950, the Michigan CIO Council contended that the sixteen labor programs broadcast throughout the state were be­ginning to have an effect "upon the political picture in Michigan." According to the Council, letters from listeners indicated that for the first time many people were hearing labor's point of view.³⁹

A television program served as the core of a public relations cam­paign in Cincinnati. In early 1952, as the Ohio labor movement geared up for the forthcoming election, the Cincinnati CIO Council broadcast a thirteen-week television program, "What's Your Answer?" In it, labor representatives debated opponents on subjects including price controls, civil rights, academic freedom, and farm supports. At the same time, Cincinnatians saw advertisements in the local press depicting the role of the CIO in the community and listened to spot radio announcements explaining how the CIO helps workers and their families. Local papers also featured the CIO contributions to the polio fund, while the public library ran an exhibit demonstrating the influence of thirty thousand unionists on the city's life.⁴⁰

Even more ambitious in terms of public relations were the labor-operated FM radio stations. As noted earlier, during the late forties, unions launched stations in Detroit, Cleveland, Chattanooga, Los Angeles, and New York City to guarantee unions, which had experi­enced difficulty in purchasing air time, access to a mass audience. The UAW, which vigorously promoted labor radio, envisioned that these stations would "enhance the cause of our political, economic, and social democracy through affording to all groups and classes such freedom of speech and opportunities for discussion as to be unpar­alleled in the history of the radio broadcast industry." Walter Reuth-er believed that the UAW could make its Detroit station, WDET, "a powerful instrument for propaganda free news." The UAW president asserted that impartial coverage "cannot be overestimated," especially "in a city like Detroit where the daily newspapers consistently dis­tort the news." In the same vein, the ILGWU's station in New York

City, which symbolically took the call letters, WFDR, promised upon its debut in 1949 to be a voice for labor and liberalism. Indeed, la­bor's FM stations featured five liberal news commentators, several of whom had been fired from commercial stations. They also typically carried the AFL and CIO's national news commentary programs and local union messages.⁴¹

In their appeal for public support, unions promised to devote their stations to community service. This stood in sharp contrast to com­mercially run AM stations that emphasized profits over public inter­est programming. The ILGWU intended to make WFDR "the most articulate town-meeting hall, the outstanding music hall, the most attractive cultural center in the community." Similarly WDET was to be the "people's station, where all the problems, social, political, eco­nomic—which affect labor and the community generally can be talked about openly and honestly."⁴² Indeed, labor FM stations pro­vided a significant amount of educational and cultural programming while serving as an outlet for communication with union members. In 1950, WDET's schedule, for instance, included "Community Clin­ic" and "Let Freedom Ring," both designed to combat discrimination and bigotry; the "WDET Roundtable," a panel discussion of nation­al and local legislative and economic issues; several children's edu­cational programs; a show produced in cooperation with the city's health department; and a daily musical series featuring the Detroit Public Library Symphony.⁴³

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All of this suggests that labor appeared to pose a real threat to busi-ness's domination of local communities. But often labor's influence was more shadow than substance. Labor's widely heralded FM radio stations folded after only a few years, the victim of both the manu­facturers' and broadcasters' unwillingness to embrace FM and of wari­ness from advertisers that the stations would be union propaganda outlets.⁴⁴ Moreover, in the late forties and fifties, the cold war atmo­sphere of suspicion and intolerance toward liberal causes impeded union access to outlets of mass communication. Particularly in po­litically conservative communities, local television and radio stations at times refused to sell air time to unions. Stiff resistance from ad­vertising agencies and television stations almost kept the Cincin­nati CIO television series off the air.^4S

Even in the realm of community services, there existed many bar­riers to labor's attainment of community recognition and power. Until the merger of the AFL and the CIO in 1955, division within the la­bor movement impeded the growth of the community services pro­gram. Although some AFL members served on the labor staff of the national and local community chests, they did not officially repre­sent the Federation. It wasn't until 1953 that the AFL even enunci­ated a policy on community activities. Continuing hostility and com­petition between the AFL and the CIO also hindered the development of a unified labor program.⁴⁶

Following the merger, the AFL-CIO committed itself to an expand­ed community services program. By 1957, the number of labor rep­resentatives on voluntary boards and committees had increased to 75,000 and the number of full-time labor staff on community agen­cies to 125.⁴⁷ But, as labor educator Alice Cook observed in 1959, "judged by a variety of standards... this representation is small— small in proportion to the number of workers in these communities and of the contributions they make in support of these agencies." She continued that "while labor representatives had been readily ac­cepted in a few communities, generally they have won only grudg­ing acceptance." Leo Perlis admitted at the AFL-CIO's inaugural con­vention that agencies viewed labor as a "junior partner."⁴⁸ Contemporary studies of community agencies revealed that trade unionists were often letterhead or token representatives with little impact on policy making. On the whole, they failed to present a new set of interests, a new program, or a new ideology.⁴⁹ In part, this re­flected resistance from social workers and the business leaders who often dominated board membership. In 1959, the Indiana State AFL-CIO observed that although labor contributed millions to agency coffers, the "leaders always look at us as something aside from the community." Furthermore, agency boards and committees made par­ticipation difficult for workers by scheduling board meetings during the day or by creating an atmosphere at the meetings that made the labor representatives "so uncomfortable that they no longer wished to attend."^so

Labor's own ambivalence about its role in the community also helps explain its failure to gain a more significant level of influence. Lack of interest was one factor. Joseph Beirne of the Communication Workers Union, who became chairman of the CIO's Community Ser­vices Committee in 1953, complained repeatedly of the refusal of unions to "exploit part of the opportunities that exist in the Com­munity Services field."⁵⁰ Participation on the boards, itself, created contradictions for organized labor. Unions presented their represen­tatives as advocates of the community's broader interests. Indeed, labor's manifesto was "The Union member is first and foremost a cit­izen of his community." To prove their nonpartisanship, labor rep­resentatives frequently yielded to other groups and failed to consis­tently promote the needs of organized labor. By emphasizing the common interests of labor, business, and the middle class, unions tended to lose their class identity. Those few employers who recog­nized this contradiction welcomed labor's involvement in commu­nity affairs, believing that participation brought a cloak of respect­ability and responsibility to union leaders that might have a moderating influence on their behavior during times of industrial conflict.⁵¹

For all these reasons, then, labor's community services failed to tap the potential public support that prevailed in the strike wave of 1945-46. Facing a generally conservative social atmosphere in the 1950s, contemporary commentators like the sociologist C. Wright Mills even denied that local communities still had important influ­ence. A bureaucratized mass society had rendered citizens voiceless and small towns powerless, according to Mills; labor could compete as a less potent large-scale institution, but it was unlikely to enjoy much success through a community-based strategy.⁵²

There is, of course, another explanation for labor's inability to at­tain power and political influence from its community activities. Business leaders were neither dismissive of community relations nor sanguine about labor's inability to compete. Indeed, the National Association of Manufacturers' chairman of the board, Cola G. Park­er, asserted that it "is in the local communities that the work must be done, and the union leaders know it.... This kind of community activity pays off in politics too. It makes the union leader an impor­tant and influential figure, and it helps the union machine do the job at the polls."⁵³ Rather than dismiss local community efforts, em­ployers and corporate managers in the postwar era embarked on an aggressive campaign to shape a probusiness environment in the na­tion's cities and small towns.

 

 

Notes

1. WCN, Mar. 7, 1948; Victor G. Reuther, "Education for Survival," Am­munition, July 1946, pp. 4-5; Mark Starr, 'The ILGWU—Leader in Education­al Work/' L&N, Summer 1950, p. 57.

2. PLN, Sept. 24, 1948.

3. UE News, Mar. 30, May 11, June 22, 1946; Lamar Kelly, "A Grass-Roots Public Relations Program/' in Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Com­munity Relations: Selected Cases, (New York, 1950), p. 45. On community sup-

port for autoworkers see Martin Halpern, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 78. Support for labor in some communities, such as Akron, reached back to the thirties. Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, 3d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 187.

4. Marc Steven Kolopsky, "Remington Rand Workers in the Tonawandas of Western New York, 1927-1956: A History of the Mohawk Valley Formula" (Ph.D. diss., University of New York, Buffalo, 1986), pp. 194, 230, 365-67, 388-408.

5. UE News, Mar. 30, Apr. 6, 1946.

6. Claude E. Hoffman, Sit-Down in Anderson: UAW Local 663, Anderson, Indiana (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1968) p. 97; CIO News, Jan. 21, Feb. 11, 1946; L. R. Clausen to Francis H Wendt, June 4, 1946; L R. Claus­en to Milton F. LaPour, July 12, 1946, Box 28, AOF I, LMDC.

7. John T. McCarty, Community Relations for Business, Operations Manual (Washington, D.C.: BNA, 1956), pp. 16-18; John T. McCarty (Consultant-Groups Relations, General Electric Co.), "Plant Community Relations" (Ad­dress before the 29th NAM Institute on Industrial Relations, Hagley Library, Wilmington, Delaware); General Electric Company, The GE Plant Community Relations Program (New York, 1952), pp. 10-12.

8. William H. Form and Delbert C. Miller, Industry, Labor, and Community (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 84. For examples of coverage of la­bor activity in Philadelphia, see Evening Bulletin, (Philadelphia) July 15, 1941, Mar. 6, Dec. 22, 1942, Nov. 20, 1943, Sept. 11, 1944, Oct. 29, 1945.

9. Cooper quoted in Kolopsky, "Remington Rand Workers," p. 365; see also pp. 335-45.

10. Orville C. Jones, "Organized Labor's Concern for Community Welfare," Religious Education 43 (Sept.-Oct. 1948): 291; Outline for CIO Secretary-Trea­surer James B. Carey from National CIO-CSC, Oct. 13, 1950, Box 59, Waiter Reuther Papers, ALUA; Daniel Bell, "The Worker and His Civic Functions," Monthly Labor Review 71 Ouly 1950): 68.

11. Outline for CIO Secretary-Treasurer James B. Carey from National CIO-CSC, Oct. 13, 1950; John R. Seeley, Community Chest: A Case Study in Philan­thropy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), pp. 22-23.

12. "United War Chest, Report of Executive Director to Executive Com­mittee," Apr. 26, 1943, in Minutes of Executive Committee, Box 4, Philadel­phia United War Chest/United Fund Records, UA; Outline for CIO Secretary-Treasurer James B. Carey from National CIO-CSC, Oct. 13, 1950.

13. Citizen CIO (National CIO Community Services Committee), Dec. 1945, Box 36, AUF, LMDC; National Newsletter, Labor-Employee Participation Dept., Community Chests and Councils, Dec. 1947.

14. Leo Pedis to Joseph A. Beirne, CIO-CSC Today—A Report with Rec­ommendations, Apr. 21, 1955, Box 55, CIO Washington Office Files, CIO Records, ALUA; Community Services News Letter, Mar.-Apr. 1945, Box 7, Greater Buffalo Industrial Union Council Records, LMDC; Nat Klein to James Miller, Jan. 2, 1946, Box 4, Buffalo and Erie County Council of Social Agencies' Re-

port on Emergency Liaison Between Families of Strikers and Social Services, Apr. 24, 1946, Box 3, both in Greater Buffalo Industrial Union Council Records.

15. Community Chests and Councils, "Report of Committee on Future Relationships of Chests and Councils with Organized Labor/' Sept. 14, 1945, Box 31, David J. McDonald Papers, USA/A.

16. Leo Pedis to Joseph A. Beirne, Apr. 21, 1955; Community Chests and Councils, Committee on Future Relations with Organized Labor, Report and Recommendations as amended and adopted by the Executive Committee, July 12, 1946, Box 10, USA Department of Education Records, USA/A; Irving Abramson to E. A. Roberts, Apr. 29, 1946, Box 31, McDonald Papers.

17. Leo Pedis to E. A. Roberts, July 11, 1946, Box 36, McDonald Papers.

18. "Minutes/' National CIO Community Services Committee, Sept. 19, 1946, Leo Pedis to Irving Abramson, Mar. 19, 1947; CIO-CSC Today: A Re­port with Recommendations, Apr. 21, 1955.

19. CIO-CSC Today, A Report with Recommendations, Apr. 21, 1955; Nat Klein to Industrial Union Councils, Oct. 15, 1946, Box 3, Greater Buffalo In­dustrial Union Council Records.

20. Emil Reive, "Labor Acts for a Better Community," reprint, Survey, Sept. 1948, Box 49, AUF, LMDC; "Proceedings," Institute on Community Services, Washington, D.C., June 4-8, 1950, Box 37, McDonald Papers; Joseph A. Beirne, Challenge to Labor: New Roles for American Trade Unions (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 75.

21. Leo Pedis to Irving Abramson, Apr. 30, 1946, Box 10, USA Department of Education Records, Pedis to Beire, CIO-CSC Today, A Report with Recom­mendations, Apr. 21, 1955; Proceedings, Twelfth Annual CIO Community Services Institute, May 17-23, 1953, Box 55, CIO Washington Office Records, ALUA.

22. Myrna S. Bordelon, "Everyman Has the Power," (pamphlet), Mar. 1948, Box 58, AUF, LMDC; Illinois State Industrial Union Council CIO Communi­ty Services Committee, Annual Activities Report, 1952, Box 46, Series 1, Mich­igan AFL-CIO Records, ALUA; "Facts Bared on Wilkes-Barre UC Activities," c. 1953, Box 55, CIO Washington Office Records; Milton Derber, Labor in Illi­nois: The Affluent Years, 1945-80 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 338-39.

23. Proceedings, Twelfth Annual CIO Community Services Institute; Fred Koppers to David J. McDonald, Nov. 27, 1956, Box 149, McDonald Papers.

24. Bell, "The Worker and His Civic Functions," p. 68; National CIO Com­munity Services Committee, A Report to the National CIO Executive Board (mimeograph), June 4, 1953, Box 46, Series 1, Michigan AFL-CIO Papers.

25. National CIO Community Services Committee, Action for a Better Com­munity (n.p.: CIO, n.d.), pp. 8-10; National Newsletter, Labor-Employee Par­ticipation Dept., Community Chests and Councils, Dec. 1947; "Proceedings," Institute on Community Services, Washington, D.C., June 4-8, 1950.

26. Ohio CIO Council, CIO Community Services Committee in Action, (Co­lumbus, Ohio CIO Council, 1950), p. 5, Box 36, AUF, LMDC; "Lake County

CIO CSC Report to the State (Illinois) CIO Convention" (mimeograph), Dec. 1953, Box 116, Bessie Hillman Papers, ACWA.

27. "Minutes," Health and Welfare Advisory Council to the National Com­munity Services Committee, Dec. 15, 1953, Box 116, Hillman Papers.

28. James Carey, "The Opportunity of Labor in Social Welfare" (Address before the National Conference of Social Work, Atlantic City, May 12, 1954), Box 55, CIO Washington Office Files; National CIO Community Services Com­mittee, A Report to the National CIO Executive Board, June 4, 1953.

29. National CIO Community Services Committee, "Case Histories of the Strike Assistance Program, 1952 Steel Strike," Box 36, AUF, LMDC.

30. J. C. Pierce to Leo Perlis, Oct. 6, 1949, Andy Brown to Leo Pedis, Oct. 7, 1949, Robert L. Kinney to Leo Perlis, Dec. 6, 1949, all in Box 37, McDonald Papers.

31. Report of the CIO Field Staff for the Fifth Anniversary Meeting Labor Participation Department Advisory Committeeman. 15, 1952, Box 10, USA Department of Education Records; Union Counseling Notes, Ammunition, July 1946, pp. 23-24; National CIO Community Services Committee, "Case His­tories of the Strike Assistance."

32. Citizen CIO, National CIO Community Services Committee newslet­ter, May 18, 1954; Carey, "The Opportunity of Labor in Social Welfare."

33. Labor-Welfare in Our Community, Chicago Industrial Union Council CSC and the Community Fund and Council of Social Agencies of Chicago news­letter, May-June 1947, July 1947, Aug.-Sept 1949, Box 59, AUF, LMDC; Illi­nois State Industrial Union Council CIO Community Services Committee, Annual Activities Report, 1952; "Four County Council CIO CSC Report to the State CIO Convention, East Moline Illinois," Dec. 1953, Statewide CIO CSC Report to the (Illinois) State CIO Convention," Dec. 1953, both in Box 116, Hillman Papers, ACWA.

34. Darrell Smith, Address to the Statewide PAC Conference, Feb. 9, 1952, Box 8, USA District 30 Records, USA/A; "Proceedings," Twelfth Annual CIO Community Services Institute; CIO Proceedings, 1953, p. 444.

35. CIO, Proceedings, 1954, pp. 501-2; "Proceedings," Twelfth Annual CIO Community Services Institute.

36. Victor G. Reuther to All Education-PAC Representatives, Oct. 3, 1950, Box 5, Victor Reuther Papers, UAW Education Department Records, ALUA; "Speakers' Bureau," Ammunition, Apr. 1948, p. 38; UAW Local 6, "Report to Membership," 1952, p. 11, Box 91, AUF, LMDC; August Scholle and Barney Hopkins to Dear Friend, June 26, 1950, Walfred Erickson to August Scholle and Barney Hopkins, July 20, 1950, Robert D. Hotelling to August Scholle, July 6, 1950, Box 177, Michigan AFL-CIO Records.

37. Meet Your CIO Neighbors in Grand Rapids, pamphlet, Box 52, AUF, LMDC.

38. "Report of 1951 County Fair Program," Marvin Meltzer, "Report on County Fair Project," Marvin Meltzer to Don Stevens, Nov 28, 1951, Box 166, Michigan AFL-CIO Records; Education at Work, CIO Department of Education and Research newsletter, 1949, Box 4, Greater Buffalo Industrial Union Coun­cil Records.

39. Bill Kemsley to All County CIO Councils in Michigan, Sept. 6, 1951, Box 7, Mildred Jeffrey Papers, ALUA; UAW, Feb. 1947; Report of Education Department, c. 1950, Box 180, Michigan AFL-CIO Records.

40. Melvin J. Brisk, "The Cincinnati C.I.O. Tries Television," Nation 175 (Sept. 6, 1952): n.p.; Ohio CIO Council News Letter, Feb. 22, 1952, in Box 54, AUF, LMDC.

41. "Unions Seeks FM," BW, Dec. 9, 1944, p. 102, "Union Network," BW, Dec. 17, 1949, pp. 92-93; UAW, Dec. 15, 1944; Walter P. Reuther and Emil Mazey to All Local Union Officers in the WDET-FM Reception Area, June 10, 1949, Box 146, Reuther Papers; "Laboring Voice," Time, June 27, 1949, pp. 64-65.

42. "On the Air: WFDR," New Republic, July 4, 1949, pp. 20-21; Untitled two page news release, c. 1950, Box 15, "Policy Statement of the UAW-CIO Broad­casting Corporation of Michigan," c. 1948, Box 13, both in Jeffrey Papers.

43. Pat Petermen, Untitled report regarding labor-owned radio stations, Nov. 1950, Box 8, "Statement of Program Service" (WDET), c. 1949, Box 13, Jeffrey Papers.

44. Mildred Jeffrey to Bob Miller, Nov. 23, 1949, Box 4, Unsigned letter to T. J. Slowie, c. Mar. 1952, Box 13, Jeffrey Papers; Sara U. Douglas, Labor's New Voice: Unions and the Mass Media (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Cor­poration, 1986), pp. 26-29.

45. "The Cincinnati CIO Tries Television"; on the difficulty of obtaining air time in Rochester where the UAW hoped that television programming might "neutralize some of this community's anti-union feeling," see the following correspondence: Frank Wallick to Mildred Jeffrey, Oct. 26, Nov. 19, 1951, Frank Wallick to Joe Rauh, Nov. 19, Dec. 29, 1951, Box 18, Jeffrey Papers.

46. Irving Abramson to Philip Murray, Apr. 22, 1949, Box 37, McDonald Papers; Edwin F. Hallenbeck to George Meany, Oct. 21, 1953, Box 26, George Meany Papers, GMA; AFL-CIO, American Federation of Labor: History, Encyclo­pedia and Reference Book, vol 3, part 1 (Washington, D.C., 1960), pp. 439-44.

47. "Need More Community Activity, Reedy Tells Parley," AFL-CIO Amer­ican Federationist, June 1957, p. 28; "People at Work," Christian Science Moni­tor, Sept. 21, 1957; AFL-CIO, Proceedings, 1957, pp. 287-89.

48. Alice H. Cook, "Education of Workers for Public Responsibility in Com­munity and Public Affairs" (Paper presented to the conference on Labor's Public Responsibility, Nov. 17-20, 1959, Madison, Wis.), Box 99, McDonald Papers; Proceedings, First Annual AFL-CIO Community Services Conference, Mar. 4-9, 1956, pp. 2-3, Neilson Library, Smith College.

49. Vaughn Davis Bornet, Welfare in America (Norman: University of Okla­homa Press, 1960), pp. 126-27, 144-45; William H. Form, "Organized Labor's Place in the Community Power Structure," Industrial and Labor Relations Re­view 12 (July 1959): 526-39; Harold L. Wilensky and Charles N. Lebeaux, In­dustrial Society and Social Welfare (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 276-81.

50. In 1953, Community Chest Council Executive Robert MacRae of Chi­cago admitted that the word "'partner' is not always realistically used in de­scribing labor's role in health and welfare. Too often 'partnership' gets lip

service comparable to that sometimes accorded the phrase 'opportunity for Negroes,'" Community (Community Chests and Councils of America news­letter), Feb. 1953, pp. 106-7; "Minutes," Executive Board Meeting, Indiana State AFL-CIO, Mar. 18-19, 1959, Box 7, USA District 30 Records, USA/A; Ith­aca Union Labor Review, June 1954, AUF, Box 30, LMDC; Alice H. Cook to Ralph N. Campbell et al., Nov. 7, 1952, Box 11, Series 3, Inter-University La­bor Education Committee Records, LMDC.

51. "Minutes," CIO Executive Board Minutes, June 4, 1953, Oct. 5, 1954; Alice Cook interview, July 12, 1989, Ithaca, N.Y.; New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Third Annual Seminar in Community Rela­tions for Business and Industry, Dec. 1, 1952, Box 10, Series 3, Inter-Univer­sity Labor Education Committee Records.

52. Irving Louis Horowitz, ed., Power, Politics and People: The Collected Es­says ofC. Wright Mills (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 353-73.

53. Industrial Relations Division, National Association of Manufacturers, Spotlight on Union Activities — Their Impact on Individuals, the Economy and the Public (New York: NAM, 1958), p. 16.