On the first birthday of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. merger, one of the U.S.'s top labor reporters, New York Timesman A. H. Raskin, gave the "brawling infant" one to grow on in the Times's Sunday Magazine. Excerpts:
UNION leaders still talk to their members in depression-born slogans that sound as incongruous in our full-employment economy as a campaign to make "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" the national anthem. In the union lexicon, the term "Big Business" remains shorthand for everything that is evil. Yet the most substantial victories won by unions at the bargaining table have come from the giants of industry. It...