(9 of 12)
Labor's white-haired leadership just does not understand what the younger members are saying. The average age of the A.F.L.-C.l.O. executive council is 63, which makes the council one of the oldest governing bodies in the world, in roughly the same league as the Vatican Curia and the Chinese Politburo. Seemingly innocent of new ideas, labor's gerontocracy has lost the loyalty of the young and the idealistic, which it had held in the time when labor led the battle for reform. Today, instead of seeking to change and improve the system, the union leadership has become a part of it. Textile-union leaders, for example, accompany mill owners to Congress to plead for higher tariffs.
The isolation of labor leaders from many of their own members is a ticking time bomb. "The '70s will be far more turbulent than the '60s," predicts Columbia Economist Eli Ginzberg, chairman of the National Manpower Committee. A major source of turbulence will be the civil service employees' rising drive for organization. There will be more disruptive strikes by teachers, police, garbage collectors, hospital workers and other public employees. Unless the unions form a coalition with minority groups like the blacks, who have their own insistent demands on squeezed municipal and federal budgets, those two forces are likely to conflict even more sharply.
The Nixon Administration wants to win more of the blue collar workers' support by doing more for them, yet the
Government is limited in what it can do. It cannot give them subsidies or generous tax relief because the sheer numbers of people involved would make the cost out of sight. At the President's order, Administration leaders are closely studying a much-discussed memo written by Assistant Secretary Rosow, who has a cornucopia of ideas. All of them fall far short of labor youth's demands but meet specific needs of their elders. The Administration, for instance, is considering legislation for the Government to regulate corporate pension plans more closely and require that all of them be vested, becoming the workers' property after ten years on the job. Partly because workers often quit their jobs before they qualify for pensions—and also because many plans are badly funded and ill-managed—half of the 30 million employees covered by them now will never draw a penny in benefits.
Other ideas must wait for the day that the budget squeeze is eased. Then the blue collar worker's new-found power will assure him at least a place in line for federal aid. One high priority: child-care centers (in half of the blue collar families, wives also hold jobs). More federal aid to community colleges would help working-class children rise beyond high school. Revenue sharing with the states could ease regressive local property taxes that often fall most heavily on blue collar families. In addition, the Government might update disability insurance laws. What Washington cannot do is give the workingman a renewed sense of pride in his job.