NATIONAL MERGER, LOCAL EFFECTS

Packing Heat

Dan Healy always wore a gun. It was one of the first things people remembered about him. Not that he necessarily needed it; the Irish Bostonian already cut an imposing figure, his well-trimmed pinstripe suits and finely starched collars barely concealing a meaty, brawler’s frame. Even his broad grin seemed to hide a hint of danger and unpredictability, ready to turn in a moment’s notice. His dark eyes, framed by jet-black eyebrows made all the more prominent by his bright silver locks, carried that implicit threat even when he laughed. Dan Healy was not to be crossed.

As the National AFL-CIO’s Regional Director for Illinois, Healy enjoyed President Meany’s full confidence. When he spoke, everyone assumed they were hearing Meany’s voice. He was the President’s fixer, sent in to solve intractable problems no matter how many heads he had to crack to get it done. From the summer of 1957 through the winter of 1961 Dan had played that part with gusto, going into rival AFL and CIO central bodies throughout the state to “manage” their merge. The gun may have fit his image, but it was only for show—a bit of theater intended to carry the point across.

Until it wasn’t. The teamster-dominated Herring Central Body had adamantly refused to merge; when Meany sent AFL-CIO representative Rudolph Ezkovitz to speak to the rowdy crew, he was not well-received. “Eskovitz was told where to go and how to get there,” Herrin Trades Council President Horace Dagnan proudly told Meany, adding “From the way we see it labor has been hurt more under your regime than it has in the 20 years preceding…a copy of our By-Laws are enclosed; if you see any reference to the AFL CIO then you most certainly are welcome to send in one of your men, but on the other hand, if no affiliation is noted, please furnish assistance if requested, otherwise we will consider the matter closed.”[1]

Meany would suffer no such disobedience. He sent Healy downstate with a clear charge. “I direct you to secure at the earliest possible time, the books, property, and charter of said Local Central Body and to hold such in your possession in the name of the AFL-CIO until such time as you receive further instructions.”[2] Healy didn’t hesitate; he marched into the rebellious den, conveyed Meany’s message and promptly moved to take their charter off the wall. As soon as he did, the hall burst into chaos. “Ain’t nobody come in here and tell us what to do,” one of the members shouted. “We don’t like them bastards and were not gonna do this!”[3] With that, the throng leapt on Meany’s man, threatening all manner of harm. The explosive mob fed on its own anger, ready to tear him to shreds. In that moment, filled with screams, swears, and sweat, even the menacing Healy knew fear. For the first time ever he drew his gun, threatening to shoot anyone who got in his way. The motley crew immediately fell mute, eyes still burning as Dan grimly fulfilled his duty. He walked away without a shot fired, the charter in hand.

Discord and Dissent

By the start of 1961 chaos like the showdown in Herrin had finally given way to some semblance of order. Central Bodies from De Kalb to La Salle had slowly settled their differences, albeit with varying degrees of misgiving. In November of 1961 Healy left Illinois to assume a trusteeship over the Cleveland AFL-CIO when all 21 of their officers were suspended for corruption.[4] Still, the process had left Illinois labor with plenty of bad blood, simmering just below the surface and waiting for an excuse to erupt. Resentment and unsettled scores would cut across the decade to come. Meany’s and Healy’s actions had also transformed Illinois labor in more subtle, insidious ways. The National AFL-CIO President increasingly leaned on trusted lieutenants with whom he had a personal connection—according to one contemporary source, “Old Dan was Meany’s right hand man. I think he and Meany had grown up together or something, they were good pals”—instead of relying on the State infrastructure.[5] Whether intentional or not, this bypassing marginalized State Federations, diluting their authority.

All this weakened State leaders like Reub at the exact moment they needed power the most. The 1960’s began as an era of hope and promise. 1961 brought with it an energetic and youthful new US President, supported by labor and asking the nation and the world to “begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness…Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.”[6] But beneath that optimism flowed a strengthening current of anger and discontent. Strongest of these was of course the civil rights movement, gaining momentum through the nonviolent protests of men like Martin Luther King Jr. and the shocking aggressive reactions their efforts provoked. Women likewise continued to struggle, especially in the workplace, where they continued to earn less money for the same work. On top of this, laborers of all colors and creeds were hard hit by a severe recession, now in its tenth month. Fears of automation and unemployment ran high, with the average worker feeling powerless to stop it.

It was a time of hope and fear. A time of unprecedented oppression and historic freedom. A time of new unity and old fractions. It was the 1960s, and it would offer Reuben his greatest challenges yet.

THE RECESSION OF 1960

Fighting for the 30-Hour Week

The recession of 1960 had hurt workers hard. By the start of the following year, laborers across the country were desperately searching for work, with U.S. unemployment swelling to 6.7 percent.[7] While Illinois stood slightly better at 6.1 percent, workers throughout the state fell into a panic.[8] Many believed the root cause of the crisis was automation. No less a figure than Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to such fears, declaring in an historic speech at the 25th Anniversary Dinner of the United Auto Workers that April:

New economic patterning through automation is dissolving the jobs of workers in some of the nation’s basic industries. This is to me a catastrophe. We are neither technologically advanced nor socially enlightened if we witness this disaster for tens of thousands without finding a solution. And by a solution, I mean a real and genuine alternative, providing the same living standards which were swept away by a force called progress, but which for some is destruction. The society that performs miracles with machinery has the capacity to make some miracles for men, if it values men as highly as it values machines.[9]

Soderstrom believed he had just such a solution. Where others saw a crisis, Reub saw opportunity, and he viewed the current troubles as the best chance yet to push for a policy he’d been advocating for since the darkest days of the Great Depression. That Labor Day he called for a bold (if familiar) idea designed around spreading working hours amongst more laborers:

There are five million wage earners idle, able, and willing to work, and constantly seeking work in the industrial centers of these United States. No reliable signs are evidenced indicating that the situation is heading for betterment. Even “brink of war scares” have had no beneficial effect…Almost all of the economic trouble in the United States is caused by the failure to solve this problem.

The shorter workday is undoubtedly the real answer. Wage earners would much prefer employment to unemployment checks, helpful as these benefits are—and they desire work in the plants and establishments where they are accustomed to earn their livelihood. By reducing the work day from eight hours to six, an extra employee would be needed for every three workers…The shorter work day works. When the hours were reduced from 60 to 48 it resulted in absorbing the unemployed people. This was accomplished without any financial subsidy from government sources…

Out of our experience we have found the so-called wild ideas of today frequently become the practical realities of tomorrow. We know that government can take over and guide coal mines, railroads or steel industries. Government can do anything. It should make things favorable for the people. It can and should help to wipe out unemployment by encouraging the establishment of a six-hour day without any reduction in pay.[10]

Reuben was right. During the Second World War, government had proved itself capable of such guidance, and previous hour reductions had helped. He repeated his call for a 30-hour week again in publications like the Peoria Journal Star and the Chicago Daily Tribune, telling reporters “The only solution to unemployment is to reduce hours. That works.”[11] He kept up the pressure through the Fall, making the issue the centerpiece of his keynote address at the Illinois AFL-CIO Convention that year. In the 20th century, he said, labor had witnessed the work week shrink by over 25 hours while the weekly wage had risen by over 88%.[12] Now with government support labor could do so again.

But that support never came. Two days later Kennedy’s Labor Secretary Arthur J. Goldberg came out against a 30-hour work week, declaring:

We feel that the first job is to put everybody back to work at 40 hours…Today it would not be practical to reduce the statutory work week. We have a strong conviction that this is necessary to protect our production, our jobs and to be sure that our goods compete in the world market where we are in competition with countries having 45, 48 hour and even higher work weeks.[13]

Reuben did all he could, passing a resolution urging the trimming of the work week to 30 hours and another criticizing the Kennedy administration.[14] The move was largely symbolic, however. Even Reub’s own AFL-CIO seemed to cool on the idea. In April of that year United Auto Workers President (and former CIO chief) Walter Reuther blocked a move to have his union press for a 30-hour week in their collective bargaining negotiations.[15] For the first time in his 31 years as President, Reuben appeared all out on his own, without the support of politicians or national labor.

Fighting to Increase the Minimum Wage

Undeterred, Reub pressed ahead with the parts of his wage agenda that he could. His son Carl introduced legislation requiring employers with four or more workers to pay a $1 minimum wage, affecting over 200,000 workers not covered under the national minimum wage law.[16] That March Reuben testified on behalf of the bill, claiming it was “modest and conservative” legislation with “so many exemptions I can’t see how anyone would object to it.[17]” He took the opposition to task, bemusedly predicting that:

Certain industries or associations will come in here and water your committee table with crocodile tears, pleading imminent bankruptcy and ask to be exempted from the bill. They will have thousands of dollars with which to fight the bill and to hire propagandists to plead their case, but not one nickel for workers’ wage increases. I speak today for the unorganized, unfinanced and for the greatest part, voiceless workers who haven’t the wherewithal to place their case before you…A low wage scale is actually a social subsidization of business inefficiency, mismanagement, poor direction and slothfulness; it helps the inefficient and slothful to keep right on in their old, comfortable and intolerant practices at the expense of their employees and the public welfare.[18]

Reuben’s foresight proved ruefully adequate. All throughout the legislative session, labor bent over backwards to pass a minimum wage bill. They solicited support from progressive business owners like Economic Development Board Chairman Arnold Maremont. They allowed a series of exemptions for various types of industries. They even lowered the minimum wage from $1.00 to $0.75, all to no avail. In the end, the Senate Industrial Affairs Committee killed the bill before it could ever come to a full vote.[19]

EQUAL RIGHTS

Illinois Fair Employment Practices Act Passes

1961 was fast proving to be a dark year for Reuben legislatively. He had been abandoned on his call for a 30-hour week and was defeated on his minimum wage proposal. The hits wouldn’t stop there. That summer Reuben also lost votes on gender equality, secret primary ballots, cash sickness, help for railroad workers, and more.[20] As the end of the session approached it appeared as though Reuben would end the year without any notable legislative accomplishments.

Yet it was exactly at this moment that one of Reuben’s greatest civil rights achievements would come to pass—The Fair Employment Practices Committee Act, more commonly known by its acronym, FEPC. The bill, which would make it illegal in Illinois to deny a job to anyone “because of race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry,” was of central importance to Soderstrom, who was known as “a leading figure in the fight for (FEPC) legislation.”[21] Every other year, Reuben would climb the capitol steps to give testimony in solidarity with fellow workers of other faiths and colors. Every other year, he would trudge back down in defeat. As he described:

During the past 18 years Equal Job Opportunity legislation has been introduced in both the Illinois House and Senate. Six times during the 18 years this type of legislation has passed the House of Representatives but its advancement each time was blocked in the Illinois Senate. On one occasion it came within one vote of passing in both Houses. Illinois is now the only important industrial state that does not have a Fair Employment Practice Commission. It seems obvious that the enactment of this proposal is long overdue.[22]

To be honest, however, Reuben had also contributed to the problem. One of the primary reasons for the bill’s failure in the past had been its exclusive focus on business. Employers had long claimed that unions were just as responsible, if not more so, for the exclusion of African-Americans from the workforce, and tried to amend the FRPC to include discrimination by unions. Reuben had always pushed hard to block any such effort, claiming the government could not dictate the membership of voluntary associations. Soderstrom had always maintained that the vast majority of unions did not have “Jim Crow bars of any kind.”[23] In this he was flatly contradicted not only by anti-labor organizations like the Illinois Manufacturers Association but by advocacy groups like the NAACP, whose Illinois President Dr. LH Holman argued forcefully that “unions and business kept Negroes from jobs.” He charged that “in the East St. Louis area the building trades council conspired with contractors to deny employment to Negroes.”[24] Republican politicians like State Senator John Graham likewise publicly wondered why “Kentucky union workers were hired in construction of a Southern Illinois power plant when there were colored workers standing in Illinois hiring halls.”[25] FEPC legislation lacking punishment for discriminating unions was easy prey for conservative legislators and their business backers, who could credibly claim that if labor was serious about outlawing discrimination, then they should hold themselves to the same standard. As the FEPC’s hearing before the Illinois Senate neared, it seemed the bill was again destined for defeat.

This time, however, something changed in Reub. It is hard to tell exactly what it was that inspired his shift. Perhaps it was the inspiring example of the Civil Rights Movement’s nonviolent resistance, a practice that so clearly drew on labor’s tactics of peaceful strikes. It could have been the absence of his old friend and mentor Victor Olander, who had been the strongest objector to any legislative restraint on union membership (in the 1940s, when Soderstrom appeared willing to accept such oversight, it was Olander who pushed hard against any such compromise). It could simply have been that in a year marked by so many agonizingly close losses that Soderstrom deeply desired a win.

Whatever the reason, as the legislative session progressed Reuben sat down with his opponents to hammer out a compromise. He found that several industrialists, such as Bell and Howell Co. President Charles Percy and Inland Steel Co. Vice President William Caples, were willing to compromise if certain key conditions were met. These men, who were once confident that business could overcome discrimination on its own, had grown convinced that “We will never have equality of employment unless a law is passed.”[26] One of the biggest hurdles, however, was the question of labor. They could not unilaterally disarm; if they were to agree to oversight, they needed labor to take the plunge with them. They needed Reuben to reverse himself and come out in favor of the universal application of FEPC.

Yet as Soderstrom approached the Senate Committee in the afternoon of Monday, April 10th, no one was certain of what he would say. Would he insist on union autonomy? Would he admit to racism within his own ranks? The committee members listened with rapt attention as Reuben began:

William Jennings Bryan said one time, “I can prove by you that your neighbor is selfish—and I can prove by your neighbor that you are selfish—so we must have laws to protect ourselves against ourselves.” SB no. 406 (the FEPC bill) will give us the reminder and nudge needed to do what’s right and eliminate the discrimination in employment with respect to race, creed, color or national origin. This legislation is needed because we are all human. We all have our faults and we all require a check on ourselves of some kind. Every human being has likes and dislikes and prejudices because he is human. It is a human failing…

I honestly believe that it would be the ruination of most employers and employees if they were permitted to have their own way altogether—and this bill proposes to save them from that ruination by keeping a check on them through the force of this proposed legislation…Morally and economically, (this bill) is sound. To deprive or deny the opportunity of employment to any of our people based solely on race or religion is obviously unsound and economically indefensible. It mocks our accepted belief in traditional dignity and consigns thousands of our citizens to jobs below their highest skills or to the ranks of those who are permanently unemployed…I wholeheartedly request, on behalf of all branches of labor, that SB no. 406 be advanced out of this committee on industrial affairs with a favorable recommendation. I want to do that in the holy name of labor, justice, and right and humanity![27]

It was a powerful movement. Reuben reversed decades of Illinois Labor policy and came out in support of a universal FEPC. As reporter Kenneth Watson noted in his explanation of the bill, “In addition to prohibiting private business firms and governments from practicing discrimination, the Illinois law also applies to ‘all labor organizations furnishing skilled, unskilled, and craft union skilled labor.’” The impact on organized labor would be huge, he said, because although some unions such as the Springfield Hod Carriers and Common Laborers Union had large minority memberships, “Negroes are to all practical extent non-existent in the higher-wage skilled unions including the Carpenters, Electricians and Plumbers.”[28]

Reuben Fights Off 5 Challengers and Holds Office

Predictably, many in Illinois labor were less than excited about the passage of such legislation. Tensions over discrimination again broke out repeatedly at the Illinois convention later that year. The biggest fight occurred over Resolution 63, which stated in part “That this convention go on record to appoint or elect a large, racially-integrated committee to study, discuss, and adopt means by which they can establish an effective, racially-integrated apprenticeship program.”[29] The sponsor, delegate Holston E. Black, Jr., an African-American member of Steelworkers No. 1063, Granite City, had also specifically identified “Negros” as being denied opportunity at an apprenticeship. This insertion evoked a long argument over whether African-Americans should be given special attention or protection. At the height of the fight, Black denounced those who denied that those who shared the color of his skin suffered a more separate and vicious kind of discrimination, declaring:

We are afraid to face the fact when you say “Negro” you may be stepping on someone’s toes. Well, you are not stepping on my toes when you say Negro, because I am a Negro. I can never be anything but a Negro. But I do want my rights as a citizen of the United States and as a brother, and I say brother in the union. I hope that word means something. We talk about brotherhood and democracy. We have to live up to it.

I feel the apprenticeship program should be opened to me, as well as anyone else. Why didn’t I use the word “minority groups?” As far as I am concerned, there is a distinct line that separates in the United States the Caucasian and the Negro. There may be some others, Mexicans that fall into that category because of the pigmentation of their skin…

If we look around this hall we see many Caucasians, they are in the majority here. We don’t know if they are Germans, Jews, Swedish, or what they are. But if you look at the pigmentation here of the skin of my Negro brothers, there is no question in your mind of what we are. So when we go up to the apprenticeship program window and say, “We would like to be a member of the apprentice program,” we are automatically excluded because of the pigmentation of our skin. We have to get some training. If we don’t, we are going to be lost. We want to keep this country for all of us. We want to be strong as a United States of America, not as a divided United States, Negroes and whites. We want it as citizens of the United States. That is all we are asking, an effective, racially-integrated apprenticeship program, depriving no one of their rights.[30]

Sadly, Black lost the fight. The word “Negroes” was removed from the resolution.

These heightened racial tensions, combined with lingering anger over last year’s convention fight, resulted in five separate candidates being nominated as candidates to supplant Reuben as President at the Illinois AFL-CIO convention.[31] The move was remarkable on two levels. First because Soderstrom had for so long run unopposed, even in the organization’s most chaotic years. Second, by trying to push for a Presidential vote at the convention instead of by a general vote, Reuben’s opponents hoped to effectively mount a procedural coup through the capture of a small number of delegates. Reuben pushed back hard, warning the delegates:

We have always had the referendum method of electing officers in our conventions. It is really wrong to take the vote away from 1,200,000 people and give it to something like 1,800 delegates. The method we have makes it impossible for the people who detest the labor organizations to tamper with the elections. You can tamper with some 1,800 delegates. People from the outside, enemies of labor can do that, but you cannot tamper with 1,200,000 people. I think in Illinois where we have some of the strongest anti-labor organizations in the world, it is much safer to leave the election of officers of this great organizations in the hands of the membership than to reduce it to some smaller figure where they can be tampered with.[32]

Reuben survived the insurrection attempt with relative ease. Furthermore, in what had appeared to become a pattern, the assault on Reub’s leadership was pared (yet again) with a tribute to his service: a 50-year pin in honor of Soderstrom’s 50 years in the International Typographical Union. First Vice President John Pilch of the ITU visited the annual Illinois convention to perform the honors, calling him a “peerless leader” with a lifetime of experience and service.[33]

Reub responded in kind, paying homage to his union as the home of “Some of the finest men God ever made…When a baseball player makes a home run it is regarded as a big day for that team. I don’t know whether this is a big day for my fellow delegates or not, but it is a big day for your president and I want to thank the officers and members of the International Typographical Union for sending representatives here to dramatize my 50 years of membership.”[34] Behind the applause and accolades, however, an uneasy tension was growing. Soderstrom’s experience was fast becoming a double-edged blade, with a growing number of delegates agitating for change.

At Miami Convention, Soderstrom Inspired by MLK’s Dream

In contrast to the Illinois convention, the national AFL-CIO gathering in Miami Beach was an uplifting and exciting event. Soderstrom, still high on the success of the FEPC, roundly approved of the Convention’s Civil Rights Resolution, which he described as “undoubtedly the most comprehensive proposal ever presented to any labor convention. It will successfully implement the many programs now underway to eliminate discrimination in employment with respect to race, color, creed, or national origin.”[35] Fittingly, the highlight of the convention for Soderstrom was the keynote address by none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. The Civil Rights leader inspired the labor faithful, comparing the experience of those in the Civil Rights movement to the early organizers of labor:

Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers. Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to ensure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table.

We want to rely on the goodwill of those who oppose us. Indeed, we have brought forth the method of nonviolence to give an example of unilateral goodwill in an effort to evoke on those who have not yet felt it in their hearts. But we know if we are not simultaneously organizing our own strength we will have no means to move forward. If we do not advance, the crushing burden of centuries of neglect and economic deprivation will destroy our will, our spirits and our hope. In this way labor’s historic tradition of moving forward to create a vital people as consumers and citizens, has become our own tradition, and for the same reasons.

Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare resources, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. Less than a century ago the laborer had no rights, little or no respect, and led a life which was socially submerged and barren. Then came the unions which brought him rights and freedom. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions, where the brotherhood of man will be undergirded by a secure and expanding prosperity for all. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. That is the dream…[36]

Reub was stunned with Dr. King’s passion and eloquence. It must have been a thrill for the skilled orator from Illinois to be treated to soaring oratory from someone else, the young Civil Rights leader. He later described the event in a report, writing “An amazingly articulate and eloquent speaker at Monday afternoon’s session of the convention was Negro leader Martin Luther King, who called on labor to end discrimination in unions and give Negroes financial support for their ‘struggle in the South.’”[37]

As the year came to a close, Reuben celebrated a momentous year fraught with conflict both within and without. He had survived defeat and desertion, emerging to bring Illinois into the new era with the successful passage of its first Civil Rights legislation.

But a tough war was yet to come, starting on the little-trod streets of Cairo, Illinois…

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