In the decade after World War II, the vitality and union consciousness of the rank and file waned. Scholars seeking explanations, journalists, and even some labor leaders blamed unions for a complacency emerging from the labor-capital accord. Combined with demographic trends, the rising affluence of unionized workers appeared to sap organized labor's energy. However, one perceptive observer, Textile Workers Union research director Solomon Barkin, pointed to a different source to explain labor's decline. For Barkin, business strategies were the most telling factor. In 1950, he asserted that management's "humanistic" personnel policies and welfare practices contrived to encourage "loyalty to the enterprise and weave the worker into the employer's social and economic fabric." These programs were simply a bald attempt "to fight a rear-guard action against the union."
If less vocal, other labor leaders, nevertheless, recognized the danger company consciousness posed to organized labor. They attempted to expose the ulterior motives behind the seemingly benign mechanisms associated with human relations and welfarism. Moreover, to varying degrees, unions sought to actively contest business for worker loyalty and to provide an alternative vision. Unions drew on a vision of the American way that emphasized equal rights and social and economic justice. They promoted the notion that worker success and security depended on the collective power of organized labor and on the continued ability of the state to regulate industry. That labor ultimately waged a less successful struggle than business should not obscure the fact that a conflict occurred.
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For many unions, particularly within the CIO, company consciousness was a serious threat to a much newer and more fragile union consciousness. The leading industrial unions worried about the growth of programs designed to "coax workers into accepting management policies." The UE recognized GE's communications program as an effort "to destroy our union so that you will have a free hand in speedup, rate-cutting, and working conditions," and vowed "it is not our intention to let that happen." Where employers established successful recreation programs, the UAW and the Steelworkers charged "the company has had a comparatively easy time dividing the loyalty of our workers in the shop" and reducing the number of dues paying members. Moreover, company propaganda frightened union officials. In 1961, Ben Segal of the International Union of Electrical Workers condemned managerial communications programs that aimed at "belittling the union and undermining it and its leadership."
Recognizing the danger company consciousness posed to the labor movement, unions fought to maintain worker loyalty. In part, they responded defensively, relying on ridicule and warnings to alert members of management's underlying goals. Henry Staffer, president of a Decatur, Indiana, UE local lampooned the goals of General Elec-tric's newly implemented human relations program; "We call upon you to quit worrying about what might be in our minds and instead give some consideration to what s in our pocketbook. The UAW, also consistently scorned human relations, calling efforts to communicate "baloney" and dismissing supervisory training as ineffective. In 1949, the UAWs journal, Ammunition, noted derisively that "foremen are attending schools throughout the country to receive training in the art of convincing workers that they are really deeply beloved by the boss." Instead, these special classes taught supervisors to forget everything they had learned as workers and to adopt as their favorite song "My Company, Tis of Thee." On the subject of company welfare work, the Federated Press, a labor news agency, found laughable the Container Corporation of America's claim that cheerier colors in the shop alone made workers happy. It quoted one old union carpenter who agreed, "Sure, its all a matter of color. Labor's black and blue from the beating it's taking, but every time it fights for a little more of that green stuff, they call us red."
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Communication programs were favorite targets for ridicule. In 1952, the Steelworkers local at the Fairbanks Morse Company renamed the company's pamphlet service the "trash rack" and thanked the firm for providing more fodder for the union paper to refute. The CIO mocked the early economic education programs by attaching labels like "Freedom Forum Fascist Front" or "Operation Gas Chamber." Later, with "exultant humor," the CIO set up a "Captive Audience Department."
Underlying the ridicule, however, was the fear that unless workers were forewarned, human relations and welfarism might succeed in weakening their attachment to the union. UAW Local 600 leaders at Ford's River Rouge plant admonished workers not to be misled by friendly foremen for the "trend of thought by 'management' is to sugar and salve" employees. Similarly, in 1949, R. S. Black of the Rouge Rolling Mill warned new employees: "Don't be fooled by a supposedly friendly arm about your shoulder. They've got an arm around your neck at the same time!" Committeeman Alex Semion cautioned fellow Rouge workers that human-relations-oriented supervision was an integral part of a "new scientific method to control and discipline the masses of workers."6
Watch out, advised local union leaders, for programs promoted by foremen that boosted productivity at the expense of union solidarity. In 1955, UAW Local 842 warned that the Pangborn's Corporation's newly implemented practice of publicly comparing production records of workers on opposite shifts was an example of the "latest company psychological trick!" to speed up production. Most worker participation programs also fell into the category of schemes that injured workers. In 1948, Machinists' president Harvey W. Brown advised employers that they could not gain workers' "full-fledged cooperation" in efforts to improve production methods unless a union representative was involved "at every phase of the plan's development." Similarly, in 1956, Steelworkers Local 2601 warned workers against participating in a management-sponsored safety program. The real goal, the union charged, was to get workers into the foremen's office to answer personal questions without union protection.7
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UAW Local 600 voted against cooperating with the Ford suggestion plan, charging it ignored suggestions for improving working conditions and paid "peanuts" for ideas that ultimately cost other workers their jobs. Warnings were not always effective. The Ford plan continued to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in awards each year. Local leaders engaged in a long campaign patiently explaining to the membership "the damage they are doing to themselves and others by participating in the much glorified 'Suggestion Plan.'" With less patience, others labeled the awards "blood dollars," and snapped "Wise up, it won't work, you won't get anything but contempt from your fellow workers" for suggestions that eliminated jobs and intensified the pace of work.8
Unions insisted that all forms of company communication were propaganda. The UAW education department regularly published exposes of the methods utilized by employers in their "secret struggle" to change workers' ideas. It warned that posters appearing in the shop with slogans, like "We've Got a Job to Do," or letters, discussing "Last Year This Is How We Did," sought to trick workers into identifying too closely with the corporation. Employee magazines also attempted to confuse workers with their homey, intimate appeal. General Motors, for instance, used in its journal an "old codger," who "looks like everyone's grandfather," to mouth glittering generalities about free enterprise. According to the UAW, the idea was "to get the corporation curse off what the company is telling you, and to make it look as if it were just your old man giving you the benefit of his years of experience."9
The labor press served as a bulwark against the business community's drive to shape worker ideology. Industrial unions' papers analyzed the content of company reading racks and condemned them for subtly trying to undermine unionism and promote "reactionary Republican viewpoints." The CIO News, which was distributed to millions of workers, tried to counter employer economic and political education through a constant stream of articles exposing the organizations and goals behind the movement. In the same way, The Packinghouse Worker advised that, "hiding under the camouflage of freedom," these courses were simply "a wicked, smear-ridden attack on every type of progressive legislation enacted or proposed since the New Deal." The Wisconsin CIO News revealed that Harding College, which created one of the economic education programs, was a front organization for a nationwide business propaganda campaign. In a January 1950 radio broadcast, the UAW commentator Guy Nunn warned Detroit area workers of this "highly organized and systematic attempt to poison the minds of workers against liberal government."10
Union leaders tried to minimize the damage created by company welfarism and propaganda by responding quickly in kind. The UAW reacted to the automakers' efforts to take credit for the growth of fringe benefits by reminding workers that benefits came from union solidarity rather than business generosity. Steelworkers Local 1400 rushed to inform workers of the union's role in the development of a new insurance plan "before any member of management breaks their arm patting themselves on the back taking full credit."n
Similarly, unions responded promptly to the employer letters to their members. Local 600 advised dumping Henry Ford II's letters into specially marked trash cans in each department. It urged "don't be fooled" by this "paternalistic propaganda," which sought "to lull workers into believing that Henry Ford II is the Great White Father who will lead the workermisled by those nasty old union leaders from the morass of exploitation and despair." The union at the John Deere Plant in Waterloo, Iowa, met the general manager's Christmas message of goodwill with a reminder that workers were facing the new year with a pay cut. During 1948, UE locals held meetings to "tear apart the curtain of company propaganda" issued by General Electric. More specialized communication mechanisms, like economic education, also brought a sharp response. Swift Company locals answered the "phony claims and arguments" of management with mimeographed leaflets prepared for distribution immediately after the classes. The UAW education department conducted a series of discussions to arm Allis-Chalmers' stewards with answers for questions raised by the company economic education program.12
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At times union-staged counteractions subverted company intentions. A union organizer, for example, asked unauthorized questions at a Thompson Products company dinner, while stewards disrupted GE employee meetings by firing half-a-dozen difficult questions in a row. Although uninvited, UAW Local 887 helped reshape North American Aviation's 1953 Family Day. Before reaching the plant gates to view a "bunch of Company exhibits" emphasizing management's story, sixty thousand workers and family members met clowns, a band playing hillbilly music, and trade unionists distributing balloons with union slogans, and a special edition of the local paper. The company later carefully blocked out the balloons from their pictures of the Family Day. Finally, some unions undercut profit sharing or employee stock ownership schemes by demanding that they be included in the collective bargaining agreement.13
Union struggles against company consciousness, particularly in the area of economic education at times went far beyond the plant. Forced to participate or lose pay, Swift and Allis-Chalmers workers filed grievances complaining that "forced listening" was a violation of their rights. Allis-Chalmers responded with a declaration that it would continue to exercise its rights of freedom of speech. Unable to gain relief through the grievance system, in 1951, the Wisconsin State Industrial Union Council, with the support of the AFL, advocated passage of a bill by the state legislature outlawing captive audiences. At a hearing, State Senator William Proxmire, one of the bill's sponsors, explained that it "would guarantee the fundamental freedom not to listen." A Republican majority controlling the Assembly Labor Committee, however, killed the measure and employers retained a free hand in the area of economic education.14
One of the more effective tactics utilized by unions involved turning the language and principles of company consciousness against employers. Trade unionists compared the promises of human relations and welfarism with the reality of the shop floor to demonstrate the emptiness of the employer's commitment to the worker. CIO columnist Max Ruskin observed that employers spoke often of the partnership between managers and workers but when the union representative asked, as a partner, to examine the company books, the employer snapped, "No" they're "confidential." Partnership, then, was a misleading concept that failed to include workers in decision making that affected their work lives.15
Unions asserted that the principle of freedom, a central tenet of employer economic philosophy, also failed to carry over into the factory. UAW Local 248 observed that Allis-Chalmers emphasized freedom during its economic education program, but when workers sought to exercise their "American freedom" to use the grievance system the General Foreman resorted to threats of layoff. In 1951, William H. Harvey, a GM industrial relations manager, in the best human relations tradition, declared that "The most valuable asset of Electro-Motive is their employees." If so, asked UAW Local 719, why were grievances over working conditions ignored? UAW Local 600 also exposed the limitations of the Ford Motor Company's commitment to human relations at the River Rouge. Union representatives complaining of health hazards and abusive supervision demanded that Ford "practice what you preach." Following layoffs in 1948, workers at the Gear and Axle department asked, "where is this big happy 'human-engineering' teamwork and cooperation stuff that we are supposed to be (a part of), or are we just not pals anymore?"16
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Labor realized that weaning workers away from company consciousness required more than rebuttals and ridicule. Indeed, organized labor needed to pose a positive alternative. Some unions, most notably the United Automobile Workers, the International Ladies Garment Workers, the Textile Workers, and, to a lesser degree, the Steelworkers, sought to resist the new cultural politics of the workplace by revitalizing and expanding activities originally begun in the thirties. Hoping to create what the historian Lizabeth Cohen calls a "culture of unity," many unions reestablished the recreational, educational, and social activities that had been disrupted by the war or, in some cases, co-opted by management. Labor sought to reclaim the initiative in creating a shared culture that reinforced workers' common ground on the union's turf rather than in the company-built facilities.17
Labor education was an important element of the union effort to build loyalty among the rank and file. It certainly had significant shortcomings. Critics have emphasized that postwar labor education tended to serve the narrow, utilitarian needs of the labor leadership. In some cases, it involved "very little education and a sizable chunk of training and information/' Moreover, it was often a "political football" in internal union struggles for power. In some unions, these internal political struggles reduced labor education's effectiveness.18
Nevertheless, its development needs to be examined within the broader context of the ongoing struggle between capital and labor. From this perspective, despite its shortcomings, labor education emerges as a weapon against the employer campaign to shape worker ideology. In 1954, the Steelworkers' Education Department observed that to a "shocking extent" the millions spent annually on business-sponsored educational activities were "sheer propaganda efforts to win over the minds and hearts of worker-employees to follow a narrow and selfish philosophy centered around the principle of the free enterprise system." The Education Department viewed itself as part of "a fight for the minds of men" and foresaw the future success of the union movement depending "upon the kind of educational programs which are offered to those who work and toil, and likewise, exercise their franchise at the polls."19
Labor education grew rapidly after World War II. Through their national and state organizations, the AFL and particularly the CIO encouraged affiliates to devote resources to education and also directly promoted educational activities through publications and conferences. In 1946, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers revived its education department. At the same time, the UAW, the ILGWU and the Steelworkers began expanding their educational activities. By 1957, the UAW could boast that sixty thousand students were involved in local classes, summer school activities, and weekend institutes. The Steelworkers' summer programs began in 1946 with several hundred workers attending two university-based institutes. Twelve years later over six thousand workers attended summer institutes based at thirty-two universities.20
These classes and institutes focused primarily on the training of stewards and local officers. In a sense, they were the counterpart to the rapidly proliferating supervisory and management training programs that were an integral part of human relations. Through labor education aimed at the secondary leadership, unions hoped to develop a core of local leaders equipped to compete with management in both the economic and political marketplaces. Most programs provided training in the tools of trade unionism, including such subjects as speaking, writing, parliamentary procedure, grievance settlement, and job evaluations, or helped officers with the issues arising from the increasingly complex contracts. Classes in economics, however, challenged the underlying assumptions of corporate economic education, offering labor's interpretation of the workings of the American economic system and emphasizing that security came not just from individual but from group effort. CIO classes, for instance, repeatedly asserted that increasing productivity alone would not improve the condition of workers or promote economic growth, as argued by management. Instead, workers should draw on the strength of their unions to demand their fair share of the gains from rising productivity, thereby improving the buying power of millions of families and bolstering the economy's mass consumption base. Redistribution of income and increased consumption by the masses of people, then, were the keys to economic progress.21
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Many of the more progressive unions integrated labor education with political action. Unlike the worker education movement of the twenties, postwar labor education downplayed a fundamental economic restructuring of society or the promotion of a third party. However, unions recognized the dependence of labor on a sympathetic state and argued that coupling labor's political and economic strength would not only increase its power but improve the welfare of ail Americans. Consequently, political action classes were sharply pragmatic, mobilizing local union leaders to mount campaigns in support of Democratic party candidates or specific legislative issues. Organized labor emphasized that its support for progressive politics and for an activist government promoting "the general welfare" stood in sharp contrast to the employer free enterprise ideology.22
Unions hoped that labor education classes would prepare stewards to infuse the rank and file with the union's economic and political goals. In 1949, UAW assistant regional director Frank Sahorske called upon the stewards at Allis-Chalmers to "talk unionism and talk Local 248" to the members. Stewards were to remind members that the CIO stood not only for full employment, maximum production, and a constantly expanding standard of living but also "believed that slums can be eradicated, civil liberties extended, social security broadened, and health and educational services increased." Eight years later, UAW education director Brendon Sexton, contended that informal plant discussions by stewards were one of the most significant means of educating the rank and file.23
Reductions in the number of union shop floor leaders mandated by postwar contracts, however, limited the political effectiveness of stewards. Sheer numbers made it difficult, if not impossible, for stewards or committeemen to compete with foremen at a personal level for workers' attention. In 1948, Ford Rouge committeemen apologized for their inability to personally contact each new employee and "explain the real meaning of unionism and its progress and benefits/' Similarly, officers of a New Jersey GM local expressed frustration that only thirteen committeemen were available to protect twenty-five hundred members "while keeping an eye on several hundred foremen at the same time." While in 1946, the UE discussed building up the steward organization so that "our stewards have the answers inside the plant for our people," by 1952, it conceded that companies reached new workers "immediately and were able in many instances to influence them before they were even contacted by a union representative."24
Given the structural limitations of the steward system, unions sought more direct avenues of communication with workers. Their goal was to raise the level of union consciousness among an often indifferent rank and file. There were a number of forces operating to produce this indifference, including the changing nature of unions and of the working class. Rank-and-file apathy was in part a response to an increasingly bureaucratized labor movement. To many workers, long-term contracts and complex grievance procedures made participation in the union inaccessible. Moreover, the very success of the labor movement in bringing economic security to workers and in orienting them away from production and toward consumption undermined the bases of labor solidarity. Unions were thus forced to compete for workers' attention with the "distractions" that these union successes had made possible. Newfound prosperity enabled many workers to move to suburbia where they adopted middle-class leisure pursuits if not middle-class values. As sociologist Richard A. Lester observed, "in this era of suburban living and thinking," it seemed nearly impossible "to preserve a sense of dedication to the ideals and traditions of organized labor."
Union leaders worried about declining significance of unions in workers' lives. In 1952, UAW officer Emil Mazey lamented that "too many people in our plants today don't know the difference between unionism and rheumatism." Again and again, unions like the UAW called for mass education to teach workers facing a "barrage" of corporate propaganda the meaning of unionism and the way in which "the union constitutes the major safeguard of the individual worker's dignity." In 1952, the CIO observed that "one of the most serious problems facing union leadership today is how to reach the rank and file with the message and program of the union," and how to generate member participation.25
To build ties to the rank and file, the ILGWU and the Building Service Employees, as well as some UAW locals, sponsored new membership classes aimed at those who had "no memory of the role the union has played in building that sense of security and dignity which they enjoy today." Others tried to create an infrastructure of local union education committees to inform and encourage rank-and-file participation in union activities. Education committees held lectures and classes, showed movies, and distributed leaflets at the plant gate that reminded workers of labor's history and achievements. Even more critical were the current issues in the state and national politics. Union education committees argued that decisions made by Congress, state legislatures, and government officials on such issues as the union shop, taxes, unemployment insurance, health care, housing policy, and civil rights had a major impact on workers. Time and time again, Mike Novak, as president of Dodge Local 3, explained to members that to solve "our Union problems we must participate in Political Action. It is as important as our homes; the furniture in our homes, the food on your tables." Despite the best intentions of some union leaders, however, labor education programs often reached few rank-and-file workers. The fact that in 1954 two hundred international unions employed only fifty full-time labor educators reflected the limits of union commitment to education.26
Unions had somewhat better success at communicating with workers. During the fifties, there were about eight hundred labor papers with a circulation of 20 to 30 million. Local unions also produced newsletters or small-scale shop papers. The union press consciously competed with both company journals and the commercial press for the attention of workers. The shop paper was "the union's most intimate speech to the union member." It talked in the language of the shop and with the familiarity of one's co-workers, revealing "the meaning of trade unionism and progressive political action in terms of the work and activities" in which the member participated. According to the UAW, labor journalism had the "special job of putting the finger on sowers of racial hatred, exposing all kinds of antidemocratic words and deeds," and of providing "antidotes for the worst poisons of the kept press." While, company journals usually refrained from endorsing specific legislative issues or candidates in favor of more general economic lessons, the union press was openly partisan in drumming up support for its liberal political agenda. There were certainly variations between unions on their level of commitment to public affairs and their political stands, but both AFL and CIO papers tended to devote considerable space to legislation and political action.27
Labor also turned to radio and television in an effort to keep in touch with the rank and file. Union leaders hoped that workers, who ignored labor education programs and the union press, might be attracted to a program that mixed union-building, politics, and popular culture. In the late forties, unions pursued two radio strategies, one focusing on owning FM stations, the other purchasing programming on commercial AM stations. In 1949, the UAW and the ILGWU obtained FCC licenses and launched labor stations in Detroit, Cleveland, Chattanooga, Los Angeles, and New York City. The UAW's noncommercial station, WDET, mixed news of the union with "decent music and intelligent discussions of community and national problems." The weekly program, "Brother Chairman," took listeners into a different union each week, introducing the officers who discussed the local's history and activities. According to Ammunition, when "some of the people start to talk on this program, you can almost hear the foreman coming up behind you in the shop, it brings your shop experiences so close to you." The UAW worked hard to promote its stations among workers, even offering low-cost FM converters. Despite this, only about one quarter of autoworkers owned FM sets. Moreover, without support from advertisers, labor's noncommercial stations proved too costly to the CIO. By 1952 the Detroit, Cleveland, and New York stations had folded.28
But, as Factory observed, labor's voice was still "on the air waves, plenty," for unions also brought their message to the membership via commercial AM radio and television. Following World War II, CIO unions organized radio councils at the city and state levels to provide support for the development of labor programming. By 1950, there were fifteen CIO radio programs in Michigan alone. UE locals in Evansville, Indiana, and Rock Island, Illinois, sponsored daily newscasts with UE news and the union's interpretation of current events. In May 1950, Toledo UAW programs concentrated on explaining the newly negotiated pension and health security provisions to members. In Waterloo, Iowa, UAW Local 838's daily program sandwiched ten minutes of popular songs around announcements of union meetings and news of the local. Utilizing a similar format, by the mid-fifties, more than forty stations broadcast a half-hour UAW program, "Eye Opener," directed at day shift auto workers on their way to work and "Shift Break," for second shift workers. A check of automobile radios in a parking lot of a UAW organized plant one morning showed 87 percent of them with the dial set on the Eye Opener station.29
Radio promised access to the unorganized as well. Seeking a new way to penetrate "the iron curtain of reaction" that existed in the South and Southwest, in 1950 Operation Dixie sponsored a series of radio programs over seventy-five stations to present the policies and purposes of the CIO to Southern workers. The program consisted of folk music played by a well-known singer and a short period of dialogue designed to overcome "the vicious and distorted propaganda" of employers. Similarly, the American Federation of Hosiery Workers' thirteen-week series, "Your Stake in Unions" argued that labor unions fought for the good of the "common man" through their collective bargaining activities. Moreover, their support for full employment, Social Security, price controls, fairer tax laws, higher minimum wages, increased unemployment compensation benefits, and better housing was leading "the march of the dispossessed toward a decent standard of living."
During the fifties, television became an increasingly popular medium for unions. CIO unions in Elkhart and Evansville, Indiana, attempted to undercut NAM and Chamber of Commerce programming with a television series directed at "Mr. and Mrs. Wage-Earner." Beginning in 1951, the UAW's weekly program, "Meet the UAW-CIO," and later the daily "Telescope" programs carried union and general news and interviews. The IUE used television during a 1957 organizing campaign at a Garden City, New York, plant. Factory observed that "there was no denying its ability to get attention, not only from every worker who tuned in, but from his whole family as well." Such was the hope of the Steelworkers union, which countered both rank-and-file indifference and a grassroots insurgency movement in 1957 with the program "TV Meeting of the Month" to bring the union to its members.31
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Undergirding this union campaign to influence workers' economic and political ideas was a more subtle attempt to build worker allegiance to the union as an institution. Unions, like employers, hoped that by addressing workers' social and economic needs beyond the realm of the factory they would strengthen their organization, while improving workers' lives. Traditions of union involvement in the health and welfare of their members reached back to the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Faue, examining the community-based unionism of the thirties, noted "consumer concerns, family and community networks, and education."32 During the postwar period, a core of unions that included the UAW, the ACWA, and the ILGWU tried to make organized labor a way of life for their members. At times, they competed directly with employers seeking to build company consciousness.
Some unions challenged the individualism of employer free enterprise ideology by urging workers to rely on their own collective institutions in meeting their material needs. In this way, organized labor sought to politicize consumption while strengthening unionism. The inflationary wave immediately after the war initially stimulated widespread union interest in cooperative buying. The UAW sold low-cost food at local union halls to prove the effectiveness of "buying solidarity/' Indeed, the UAW built member loyalty by appealing to workers as consumers. Autoworkers eagerly snapped up the outboard motors, refrigerators, and coats the union sold at wholesale rates.33
The UAW and the Rubber Workers were at the forefront of a movement to channel worker protest against high prices into a consumer-run democratic system of distribution. In 1948, they joined with representatives of AFL and CIO unions, including the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, the Steelworkers, and the Sleeping Car Porters, to form the Council for Cooperative Development to promote coop-erativism within the labor movement. By 1949, Detroit had four large cooperative food warehouses backed by one hundred union locals, and union cooperatives were operating in other cities across the country. At the same time, Racine, Wisconsin, South Bend, Indiana, and New York City trade unionists were building cooperative housing. Within three years, 250 UAW locals had formed cooperative credit unions run by workers "interested in the welfare of their union brothers and sisters." The UAW urged members to support a movement that fought monopoly and worked to create "a world organized to serve the needs of the many and not the profits of the few." When the Flint, Michigan, co-op opened, Roy Reuther declared that it was a symbol of labor's "unity and solidarity." It would make Flint a coop city "where people live happilyinstead of a GM town."34
Provision of services that improved or eased members' lives reinforced the notion of the centrality of the union to workers. In the early fifties, Toledo autoworkers could pay their utility bills, borrow money, and pick up hunting licenses or driving licenses and plates at Local 12's five-story union hall. The local's Flying Squadron visited the sick and furnished pallbearers and "a committee that will mourn your passing sincerely." For UAW Local 200 of Windsor, Canada, visiting ill members provided proof that "all this business about brothers and sisters really means something," creating a "deep sense of loyalty the members feel toward their local."35
Union concern for health went beyond visiting the ill. Most workers received their health care from commercial insurance secured through collective bargaining. In some cases, unions stipulated that claims pass through the local office to ensure proper adjustment and to give workers a greater feeling of union involvement in their health care. A group of unions, however, directly provided medical care to workers. After World War II, the ILGWU, the United Mine Workers, the ACWA, and the Hotel Workers began offering health services, while St. Louis and Philadelphia labor organizations established medical centers open to local unions through subscription.36
Generally, limited resources prevented the development of such elaborate union health and welfare programs. Still, the CIO envisioned a labor movement that reached out to workers with personal problems having nothing to do with collective bargaining issues. Frequently, this meant serving as a liaison between the rank and file and the greater resources of the community. The CIO's National Community Services Committee, which emerged during World War II to help members cope with wartime dislocations, grew rapidly thereafter. Following the merger of the AFL and CIO, it became an AFL-CIO department. The Community Services program trained counselors who directed fellow workers in need to appropriate community agencies and then ensured that workers received full access to the health and welfare services they supported through taxes and voluntary contributions. Counselors dealt with the problems of unemployment, illness, debt, and housing that often struck workers and their families with catastrophic consequences. They aided workers through the often confusing task of applying for unemployment benefits or public assistance. By 1954, twenty thousand workers, representing a wide range of CIO unions, had graduated from union counselor training courses. Three years later the number of union counselors had doubled.37
The CIO used the Community Services program to encourage workers to turn first to their union with their problems. One of the early union counselling classes, conducted in 1944, stressed that counselling represented the glue that kept the union strong. Harry Block, of the Philadelphia Industrial Union Council, charged that management had spent large sums of money on "so-called counselling services" that often were used to combat labor. Unions, he contended, needed to perform these "services themselves." Instructor Anne Gould, declared that labor "must do a far greater job than collective bargaining" and advised that if you "help your members with their domestic problems it will help to hold the union together." We now have, she continued, "a tremendous influx of workers who are not used to unions or to industrial life. It is your job to make the union a vital thing in their lives/'38
Community services provided organized labor an entry into workers' homes. Unions had long recognized the importance of family support and participation, particularly that of wives. In the early twentieth century, craft unions had women's auxiliaries that organized union label campaigns; during the thirties, the "emergency brigades" of women workers and wives provided critical support to emerging CIO unions.39 After World War II, the AFL regularly passed resolutions supporting the activities of its auxiliaries. But, AFL interest was more form than substance. In 1948, the vice president of the American Federation of Women's Auxiliaries complained of "neglect" on the part of the labor movement, and the Massachusetts Federation of Labor substantiated this charge, finding only one AFL auxiliary in the state.40
Like employers, many CIO unions sought to court the family. During the thirties, promoting family-oriented activities had contributed to the CIO's emerging "culture of unity." In the postwar period the CIO again turned to families. Taking what Business Week called a "cradle to grave" approach to union organization, auto, clothing, and New York City retail worker locals invited wives and children to meetings and ran classes or movies for "toddling ClOers." Union papers, like those of companies, published special women's pages to attract family readership. In 1949 UAW Local 600's Ford Facts declared that "today the Union needs 'Union Home's as well as Union Shops. Today the Union needs the support of wives and families, who will read Union, buy Union, and vote Union!" It asked "will you carry the message by word and action. Are you a member of a Union family?"41
CIO auxiliaries, organized in the Congress of Women's Auxiliaries, taught the principles and ideals of trade unionism. Most performed stereotypical women's work within the local, organizing social events and refreshments. But, like their sisters of the thirties, postwar auxiliary members bolstered their husbands and brothers during times of labor conflict. In 1955, autoworker Ben Michel's wife, who was marching on a Harvester picketline with her husband and son, declared, "If my husband didn't get out on the picket line and help fight for better wages and conditions... I would lock him out." The UAW credited the Windsor auxiliary for exposing and defeating a back-to-work movement during a 1954 strike and in 1956 asserted that Sheboygan, Wisconsin, wives played a key role in the long running boycott against the Kohler Company.42
As early as 1944, the CIO recognized the political potential of auxiliaries. But, the 1952 election made clear that organized labor's political message was not getting through to most women. Union wives, in contrast to their husbands, tended to favor the Republicans. A steelworkers' survey showed that during the campaign, 87 percent of members' families failed to receive union political literature, and political problems were not a topic of family discussion. Beginning in 1954, the CIO's Political Action Committee began making special appeals to CIO women. The CIO issued "A Call for Mom" to attend "family participation conferences" to activate women voters. Workshops, like "Does Politics Affect Our Family Life?" tied current political issues with the bread and butter problems facing the average homemaker. Effective political action, declared the CIO, was a family affair that required "the integration of husbands, wives and other voting members of the family into a working group."43
Following the merger, the AFL-CIO set up a Women's Activity Department within its Committee on Political Education at both the national and local levels. Like auxiliaries, WADs provided support to local COPE political initiatives. Lack of interest in women at the local level, however, often undercut the national organization's efforts. In 1960, COPE director James L. McDevitt admitted that too often unions ignored members' families; "We are fighting with one hand behind our back so long as we don't make this a family fight with every member of a trade union family on the team."44
Expanding the union to include the retired workers also enhanced organized labor's political as well as economic power. A UAW program launched in 1953 included three Detroit "drop-in" centers in local union halls, a newspaper, monthly information-recreation meetings, and two citywide parties that kept upward of ten thousand retirees connected to organized labor. By 1959, the autoworkers operated drop-in centers in thirty cities open to all elderly workers. The Garment Workers, the Textile Workers, and the Clothing Workers ran similar programs for their retirees. The UAW encouraged retirees to retain their union membership, viewing their continued activity as a crucial link to the struggles of the thirties. UAW Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey asked a 1953 gathering of retirees to "tell the younger men and women what conditions were like before the union, what you saw with your own eyes. Tell them about the long, bitter struggles to reach the standards we have now." Militant retirees bolstered the union in its ongoing struggles. During the 1958 negotiations, UAW retirees from across the country "slow marched" in considerable strength around the General Motors Administration Building to express their solidarity with the union. Unions also recognized that retired workers, like women, represented an important political force. During the fifties, retired workers in Michigan were mobilized in special campaigns for liberalizing Social Security, housing legislation, and the development of a state program of services for the elderly.45
After World War II, like their corporate counterparts, unions again looked to recreation as a means of earning the loyalty of workers and their families. Recognizing the danger the growing company-sponsored recreation movement posed to unions, segments of the labor movement contested business leadership in the realm of leisure. The CIO urged its affiliates to promote more systematically recreational activities in an effort to draw workers from the company orbit. CIO recreation councils and sports leagues emerged in many cities. City central bodies, like the Milwaukee Industrial Union Council, frequently sponsored tournaments in softball, bowling, or golf that at times attracted thousands of workers. Local unions also established activities committees. United Electrical Workers Local 450 formed its committee in 1948, and during its first year of operation organized a bowling league and sponsored a Christmas party, horseback riding club, and the local's first annual picnic.46
In 1946, the United Steel workers established a recreation program to compete with the company-sponsored industrial leagues. It promised athletes participation in a "sports program sponsored exclusively by our union/' and assured the rest of the membership of the opportunity to root for "union made" baseball or basketball. In response to the postwar managerial offensive, the UAW revived its moribund recreation department and developed the labor movement's most extensive program. When employers said to workers, "Look at the recreation program we have for you!" the union wanted its members to reply, "Thanks just the same. We're not interested in your paternalism. Our local has a great recreation program, too."47
The Autoworkers' recreation department hoped to infuse members and their families with the spirit of unionism. It encouraged the formation of local union recreation committees and regional recreation councils and provided training for volunteers at workshops and conferences. By 1953, the UAW asserted that four hundred golfers and twenty-four hundred bowlers matched skills in UAW International Championships. One fourth of the union locals sponsored interdepartmental basketball, softball, or bowling leagues, while nine hundred locals fielded industrial league teams. Moreover, family "fun ni-tes" and three UAW summer camps gave children a "union view of the world."48
The "lighted union hall" was a central tenet of UAW recreation.
Locals reported that open bars (or in the case of Lockport, New York, a night club, complete with floor shows, movies, dancing, and a ballroom) made the union hall "the social center of activity" for many workers. All the CIO locals in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, supported UAW Local 644's club. In 1949, Windsor autoworkers, instead of going inside "beautiful plants" to find a more fulfilling and stabilized recreation, went to the union hall. "There, within his union, he is finding his own ways of building a more satisfying social life."49
Like other unions, the UAW looked to recreation to unite the membership. One of the primary wedges dividing workers was racial prejudice. In contrast with the AFL, the mass-production oriented CIO unions had actively recruited black workers during the organizing drives of the thirties and forties and sought to develop a close cooperative relationship with the black community. The CIO national office encouraged its affiliates to pursue egalitarian racial practices within their unions while fighting discrimination and prejudice within society as a whole. By the end of World War II, the UAW had emerged as one of the most racially egalitarian labor organizations in the country. It had earned the respect of the black community in many northern cities by championing black political and social causes including Fair Employment Practices legislation and public housing. As part of the union's commitment to racial equality, the UAW recreation department encouraged social interaction between black and white workers. UAW newspapers regularly published pictures of integrated bowling and basketball teams as testimony of the union's success in promoting integrated recreational activities. The recreation department also vigorously fought discriminatory practices. It condemned management programs that condoned racial discrimination, observing that "there are no black and white home runs," and in the factory "there is no black production or white production." The recreation department vowed to bring together workers in a "situation in which runs scored, or pins knocked down, or strikes taken, not the color of a man's skin nor the altar at which he kneels will be the criteria for acceptance." Accordingly, the UAW led the CIO in a five-year boycott of segregated American Bowling Congress tournaments. It ended in 1951 with the elimination of the "whites only" rule.so
At times, union and company programs directly competed for worker participation. Such was the case at the River Rouge, where UAW Local 600 clashed repeatedly with the Ford Motor Company. Indeed the struggle over recreation symbolized the larger conflict between company and union. With sixty thousand members, a large percentage of them African Americans, Local 600 had one of the UAW's most fully developed recreation programs, offering a wide variety of activities ranging from ballroom dancing classes and bridge tournaments to an annual water carnival. While thousands participated in the union-sponsored activities, however, even more turned to the company, which boasted a more elaborate and better funded and segregated program. In 1950, for example, the union sponsored one bowling league with twenty teams, while Ford had sixty men's leagues and thirteen women's leagues. Union officers pleaded with the members for support. R. S. Black of the Rolling Mill asserted: "We can call it loyalty for a good union member to confine his sport likes to his Local Union activities." In the Plastic Plant, Bill Jackson asked why "some workers prefer to participate in the company sports plan even when they are contacted by their own union brothers."sl
Department picnics were another arena of contention. In July 1951, plastic department foremen were encouraging worker attendance at an upcoming Family Day Picnic. Union officials warned that it was "strictly a company affair" and a ruse to gain employee consent to intensifying production by improving relations between worker and supervisor. Unionist James Simmons asked, "how can you go to a picnic one day and feel good about the mean tricks those very same fellows play on you and your fellow workers?" The union countered with its own picnics. That summer the Stamping Plant contended that despite a small budget, its picnic, which excluded supervision and featured greased pole climbing, chicken catching, and a jitter bug contest, "was just as successful and well or better attended as any put on by the Company." If company picnics boosted production and enhanced company consciousness, union picnics enhanced union solidarity. Following the union-sponsored Rouge stamping plant picnic, a Local 600 member observed that "events of this nature do more to weld friendship and promote unionism than all the speeches our politicians feed us" but lamented "too bad, we don't have picnics more often."52
Unions, however, had difficulty competing with management over recreation. One problem, actually shared with employers, was competition from commercialized leisure, particularly television, which encouraged workers to remain in their homes for recreation. Moreover, many unions had neither the means nor commitment to contest employers for worker loyalty in this realm. For many locals, recreation consisted mainly of occasional picnics or Christmas parties for children or a baseball team fielded in the local industrial league. At the national level, only the Clothing Workers, the Ladies Garment Workers, and the Textile Workers matched the UAW's commitment to recreation. Even the UAW's program suffered from underfunding. In 1952, Walter Reuther admitted that the "entire recreation program of the UAW must operate on a budget so low its total would appall the average person connected with industrial recreation." Few unions had the recreation buildings or facilities that were a common feature of corporate-sponsored recreation. Local 600 was unusual in employing a recreation director. In contrast, a staff of fourteen ran the Ford Company program at the Rouge.
Recreation also mirrored the internal contradictions within the CIO on the issue of race. At the national level, CIO unions embraced a racially egalitarian ideology, but at the local level segregation and racial discrimination in seniority and promotion continued. Union leaders moved more slowly and inconsistently when it came to fighting discrimination within their own organizations because they were "constrained by the prejudices of the white rank and file." In recreation, for instance, the UAW's national recreation department constantly struggled against racial prejudice. From the origins of the union in the 1930s, black participation in the locals' social activities had always been a "touchy matter." In some locals, the presence of a large number of black workers had postponed the development of social programs. In 1948, UAW officials were still chiding members who didn't participate in the union social affairs on the grounds that they couldn't bring their families "out in that kind of group... with all races, creeds, and different types of religious training."53 These workers, perhaps, felt more comfortable in company programs some of which separated black and white workers.
* * *
The overwhelming advantages of wealth and power business brought to its campaign to build company consciousness made labor's opposing efforts seem insignificant. Indeed, the social unionism of the CIO has been almost forgotten as historians have tended to dismiss the social consciousness and social vision of the postwar labor movement. It has been too easy to read the rise of business unionism and the steady decline of organized labor back into the immediate postwar era. But, this was no foregone conclusion. Well into the fifties, despite the efforts of business, the inhospitable political climate of the cold war, and labor's internal divisions, a segment of organized labor embraced social unionism and defended a liberal, democratic vision, which placed the social needs of the people above profits. Their efforts to make labor's voice heard among workers contributed to organized labor's maintenance of a significant level of status and power in postwar America. That the lighted union hall began to dim in the late fifties should not diminish organized labor's struggle against the managerial onslaught of the postwar years.
Notes
1. Solomon Barkin, "A Trade Unionist Appraises Management Personnel Philosophy/' HBR 28 (Sept. 1950): 60, 64.
2. 'The Secret Struggle to Change Your Ideas/' Ammunition, Sept. 1955, p. 6; UENews, Nov. 13, 1948; UERMWA, Proceedings, 1952, pp. 250-51; Melvin G. West to R. J. Thomas, Feb. 18, 1946, Box 2, Series II, UAW Recreation Department Records, ALU A; "United Steelworkers Proposed Recreation Program," 1946, Phillip H. Scheidling to David J. McDonald, Mar. 27, 1946, Box 133, David J. McDonald Papers, USA/A; Ben D. Segal, "A Unionist's View of Economic Education," Challenge, Apr. 1961, pp. 23-27, esp. 27.
3. UE News, Nov 13, 1948.
4. "Deep Therapy on the Assembly Line," Ammunition, Apr. 1949, pp. 47-51; 719 News (GM Electro-Motive Diesel UAW Local 719, Brookfield, 111.), Jan. 1949, Nov. 1951; FF (Ford Motor Company UAW Local 600, River Rouge Plant), Feb. 28, Mar. 13, 1948. Christmas edition, 1952; Federated Press quoted in Reading Labor Advocate, Jan. 27, 1950.
5. SS (Fairbanks-Morse Company, USA Local 1533, Beloit, Wis.), Aug., Dec. 1952, Feb. 1953; UAW, Jan. 1950; 719 News, July 1950; William H. Whyte, Is Anybody Listening (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), p. 8.
6. Rouge union leaders urged workers to ignore the company's suggestion that they take their troubles to their supervisor rather than to their committeeman. FF, Feb. 7, 1946, Jan. 3, 24, 1948, July 16, 1949, Feb. 24, 1951, Feb. 9, 1952.
7. Unionaire (UAW Local 842), Dec. 1955; Harvey W. Brown, "What Labor Expects of Management," AMA Personnel Series No. 117 (1948), pp. 26-27; USA Local 2601 (Buffalo, N.Y.) Minutes, May 7, 1956, Reel 2, LMDC.
8. FF, Aug. 21, July 9, Sept. 3, 10, Dec. 10, 1949, Jan. 21, Feb. 18, 1950, July 14, 1951, Oct. 3, 1953. For other examples of union reaction to suggestion plans, see SS, June 1955, and Hod Rod, May 29, 1959.
9. "The Secret Struggle to Change Your Ideas," pp. 6-10; "Propaganda Methods I," Ammunition, Dec. 1950, pp. 2-7, esp. 4; "The Reading on the Racks," Ammunition, July 1953, pp. 2-3; "How Corporations Get Their Propaganda Over" (leaflet), c. Dec. 1952, Box 19, UAW Education Department Records, 1952-56, ALUA.
10. "The Reading on the Racks," Ammunition, Nov. 1950, pp. 2-3; "PropagandaCafeteria Style," Machinists Monthly Journal, Dec. 1953, pp. 374-75; SS, Aug. Dec. Feb. 1953; CIO News, constantly linked economic education to business organizations like the NAM, the Chamber of Commerce, and Opinion Research Corporation and to right-wing business-financed bodies,
including the Foundation for Economic Education and the Committee for Constitutional Government. The findings of the House Lobby Investigating Committee fueled labor's attack on economic education. See, among others, CIO News, July 3, 24, Aug. 14, Oct. 30, 1950, June 4, 1951, Oct. 27, 1952; Packinghouse Worker, June 30, 1950; WCN, Jan 6, 13, June 9, 1950; Wisconsin State Industrial Union Council, "If You Don't Listen, You'll Lose Your Job: An Expose of the Freedom Forum" (pamphlet), c. 1950, Box 58, AUF, LMDC; "Captive Audience and Labor," Guy Nunn Radio Script, Jan. 7, 1950, Box 146, Walter Reuther Papers, ALUA.
11. UAW, May 1955; UAW Local 248 (Allis-Chalmers) Administrative Letter, Dec. 13, 1951, Box 7, United Automobile Workers Local 248 Papers, ALUA; 719 News, May 1949.
12. FF, Feb. 7, 1948, Aug. 6, 1949; Hod Rod, Mar. 24, 1953, Mar. 10, 1955; UE News, Apr. 10, 1948; WCN, July 17, 1950; "Leaflet" enclosed in Lewis Car-liner to all Education and PAC representatives, Oct 16, 1950, Box 5, Reuther Papers.
13. Recorder, Dec. 1946, case 15, Thompson Products Company Records, Baker Library, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts; General Electric Employee Relations Newsletter, June 24, 1949, UAW, Aug. 1953; Ithaca Labor Union Review, June 1955.
14. WCN, Feb. 24, June 23, 1950, May 11, 21, 1951; Organizer, Mar. 6, May 21, 1950; CIO News, July 17, 1950, May 21, 1951; Wisconsin State Industrial Union Council, "Legislative Letter," May 4, 11, 1951, Box 51, AUF, LMDC.
15. WCN, Dec. 9, 1949.
16. Organizer (UAW Local 248), Jan. 31, 1950; 719 News, Feb. 1951. FF, Jan. 31, Feb. 2, Apr. 10, 1948, also Jan. 24, Mar. 13, May 15, July 24, 1948, June 12, Dec. 9, 1950, Sept. 1, 1951.
17. Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, "Industrial Unionism and Labor Movement Culture in Depression-Era Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 109 (Jan. 1985): 3-26; Lizabeth Cohen, Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 324-68.
18. Frank Marquart, An Auto Worker's Journal: The UAW from Crusade to One-Party Union (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975); Kenneth D. Carlson, "Labor Education in America," Review of Educational Research 41 (Apr. 1971): 115-29, esp. p. 119.
19. In 1950, UAW Local 719 editor Herman Rebhan noted that "the G.M. Corporation has an educational program for the workers. The Corporation spends a fortune on pamphlets, movies, employee activities councils, forced lectures, etc. If we want to make sure that we not only preserve our union
but build a stronger and better organization-----We must devise some better
techniques to bring home the union's ideas on economics and political action." 719 News, June 1950; USA, Report of Officers to the Seventh Constitutional Convention, Sept. 20-24, 1954, pp. 21-29, esp. 21-22.
20. M. Mead Smith, "CIO Training for Active and Effective Local Leadership," Monthly Labor Review 74 (Feb. 1952): 140-44; "Planning for More Edu-
cation," Ammunition, May 1946, pp. 10-11; Joyce L. Kornbluh and Mary Fre-derickson, Sisterhood and Solidarity: Workers Education for Women, 1914-1984 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), p. 56; Thomas E. Linton, An Historical Examination of the Purposes and Practices of the Education Program of the United Automobile Workers, 1936-1959 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan School of Education, 1965), pp. 187-305; USA, Report of Officers to the Ninth Constitutional Convention, Sept. 15-19, 1958, pp. 122-26.
21. Joseph Mire, "Recent Trends in Labor Education" (Paper presented at the Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of School for Workers, Nov. 20, 1959, Madison, Wisconsin), Box 99, McDonald Papers, USA/A; Jack Barbash, The Practice of Unionism (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), pp. 269-76; Congress of Industrial Organizations, The CIO: What It Is and What It Does, n.d., pamphlet.
22. A. A. Liveright, "A Long Look at Labor Education," Adult Education 4 (Feb. 1954): 102-3; "Report of Education Department," c. 1950, Box 180, Michigan AFL-CIO Records, ALUA; Linton, An Historical Examination, pp. 221-56.
23. "Minutes," Oct. 24, 1949, Joint Council Meeting, Box 3, UAW Local 248 Records, ALUA. For Brendon Sexton, see Linton, An Historical Examination, pp. 198-99; "The Stewards are the Brains of the Union," Ammunition, June 1948, pp. 18-21.
24. FF, Jan. 24, 1948; UAW-CIO Assembler (Linden, New Jersey, GM Local 595), Apr. 1951; Proceedings, Twelfth Annual Convention, UERMWA, 1946, p. 189; Proceedings, Seventeenth Annual Convention, UERMWA, 1952, p. 250.
25. Robert Zieger, American Workers, American Unions, 1920-198S (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 138-41; Kenneth D. Carlson, "Labor Education in America," p. 119; Richard A. Lester, As Unions Mature: An Analysis of the Evolution of American Unionism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 44-45; UAW, Apr. 1952; FF, Sept. 29, 1951; CIO Department of Education and Research, "How to Reach the Rank and File Some Suggestions for Union Officers," Feb. 1952, Box 39, AUF, LMDC.
26. FF, July 15, 1950; Joseph Mire, Labor Education: A Study Report on Needs, Programs and Approaches (Chicago: Inter-University Labor Education Committee, 1956), pp. 49-53; USA Executive Board Meetings, Apr. 5-6, 1954, pp. 32-40, B
