Labor Day, 1957

On this day the hosts of labor shout their hosannas. It is a demonstration of a better age, a more chivalrous time, when labor shall be honored and well-rewarded.

So exulted New York Unionist Peter J. McGuire, who originated the idea of Labor Day in 1894 on the joyous occasion of the first U.S. legal holiday honoring the workingman. During the next six decades, U.S. labor grew mighty beyond Carpenter McGuire's wildest dreams. But this week there is little reason to shout hosannas. Instead, at the time of Labor Day, 1957, organized labor is disturbed by its recent past, perplexed by its present, taking anxious stock of its future.

For months in 1957 the U.S. watched with fascination and with shock as a Senate investigating committee poked into labor's darkest corners. The faces on the television screen were scarcely those of labor leaders concerned with the betterment of the workingman. Instead, they were suety Dave Beck, president of the powerful International Brotherhood of Teamsters, angrily shrilling the Fifth Amendment and standing revealed as a man who would enrich himself at the expense of an old friend's widow. And last week there was Beck's heir apparent, Teamsters' Central Conference Boss Jimmy Hoffa, who was unable to "recollect" teaming with a union-busting racketeer to defeat the work of his own union. Beck, Hoffa and dozens of similar stripe were precious poor exhibits for Peter McGuire's better age and more chivalrous time.

Far beyond the squalid skulduggery of any individual labor leader is the question of labor's role in a nation confronted by creeping inflation. United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, aware of a growing resentment, tried to pass the blame to management--and had it tossed right back (see below). Indeed, there was justification for the idea that labor's basic appetites are inflationary. Said the New York Times this week: "There is a built-in 'political' need for the labor union leader to win a wage increase every year, if at all possible, and to win as good increases for his men as the labor leader in the next union."

Piling relentlessly up throughout 1957, such problems threaten a historic change in the political climate in which organized labor lives and breathes. Just four years ago, the weight of political pressure was for softening the Taft-Hartley law in labor's favor. In fact, the notion of a tougher law seemed unthinkable. But in 1957 the U.S. saw how Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa used the nation's mightiest union to grasp for personal wealth and power. And in 1957 the role of unionism in a peacetime economy was called into question as rarely before. As of this week, there is no longer the slightest chance that Taft-Hartley will be softened--and there is a strong likelihood of more restrictive labor laws.

Under such circumstances, Labor Day, 1957, could hardly be labor's best day. The hope for organized labor and for all the U.S. is that out of 195 fs trials will come a cleaner house for labor, and hosannas on a better day.

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