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Meetings in the Woods. That apathy causes lost opportunities. For evample, organized labor has long talked hopefully of capturing the U.S. South, the greatest remaining stronghold of nonunion workers. But the record remains dismal. The Textile Workers Union, the dominant union in the South's biggest industry, has actually declined from 125,000 to 60,000 over the past 14 years. To thwart labor organizers, many Southern companies carefully keep their wages just higher than union scale. In addition, Southern foes of labor play up the pro-civil rights stands of national unions, cite the integrationist views of Walter Reuther, and distribute pictures of United Electrical Workers' President Jim Carey dancing with a Negro girl.
Fought by Southern pulpit, press and public, most union-organizing drives are downright surreptitious. Says Atlanta's Textile Workers' Leader Michael Botelho: "When we go into a little town to organize, we generally hold our first meetings in the woods." But the fact remains that truly determined organizing efforts can pay off even in the South—and the outfit that has proved it is none other than Jimmy Hoffa's International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who have increased their Southern membership from 60,000 to 80,000 since 1957. Whatever else may be said about Hoffa, he works at recruiting with a dedication displayed by few other labor leaders. Says a Florida-based official of the National Labor Relations Board: "The thing with the Teamsters is that they will keep trying. They'll tackle a plant year after year."
Merged Mixups. In their present state of mind, few of labor's leaders seem to possess either the will or the power to get together in a concerted drive against the problems that afflict their movement. Hoffa's racketeer-ridden Teamsters are a national disgrace. But beyond kicking the Teamsters out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., labor's responsible leaders have done little or nothing to combat the Teamsters' power. A.F.L.-C.I.O. locals have continued to play ball with the Teamsters, and at least one member of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Ethical Practices Committee, the National Maritime Union's horny-fisted Joe Curran, is an open Hoffa ally.
Aside from the external problem of Hoffa, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. has plenty of internal problems of its own. The long-awaited, highly touted 1955 merger of the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. has been far from successful. Today the A.F.L.'s craft unions and the C.I.O.'s industrial unions devote almost as much energy to jurisdictional brawls as they do to bargaining with management. George Meany, who was the A.F.L.'s president before the merger, is either unwilling or unable to bring an end to the internecine warfare. Walter Reuther, who was the C.I.O.'s president until, as part of the merger agreement, he became an A.F.L.-C.I.O. vice president, fumes at Meany's inaction. Reuther would dearly love to unseat Meany, but he simply does not have the votes—his C.I.O. contributed only 5,414,000 members to the merger, as against the 10,613,000 of Meany's A.F.L.
The Perplexity of Progress. Yet, even if they were working smoothly together, and even if they were inspired by the enthusiasm of yore, labor's leaders would still have to face up to a perplexity of progress: industrial automation.