Time for Responsibilities

The clash and clangor of the 1959 session's biggest debate sounded in Congress last week as the Senate hammered out a labor-reform bill. That debate (see The Congress), despite its compromised outcome, marked a milestone in the U.S.'s social-economic history.

Before and during the Depression, U.S. labor battled bravely and sometimes bloodily to win its rights and correct imbalances. But the victory was so complete that the rights were soon woven into everyday U.S. economic life. Meanwhile, the laws drawn to protect underdog labor came to serve, in big segments of the labor movement as protection for power-hungry and corrupt leaders of top-dog labor. Moreover, labor's leaders, having won their economic battle, failed to work out a philosophy going beyond oldtime A.F.L. President Samuel Gompers' antiquated one-word creed: "More." Armed with special privileges written into law, labor kept pushing for more "more," often at the expense of the economy's stability and orderly growth.

In passing an overdue labor reform bill, the Senate, as the expression of democracy at work, was reflecting not only public indignation at union corruption and racketeering, but also widespread dissatisfaction with Big Labor's outdated, class-against-class philosophy. What wide-ranging Pollster Samuel Lubell reported after talking to U.S. steelworkers (see Labor) indicates that many union members have come to see what some of their leaders have not yet acknowledged: the way for labor to get Sam Gompers' "more" is to share, fairly and responsibly, in the economy's overall growth.

The victory in the Senate debate seemed to go to the advocates of middle-of-the-road mildness, but crusty John McClellan's half-defeated thrust to put some bite into the bill left a mark of realism on the measure--a sign that the U.S. is starting to demand from organized labor responsibilities to match the rights and privileges hard-won in the '30s.

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