A Family Quarrel

As A.F.L.-C.I.O. bigwigs gathered in Bal Harbour, Fla., for their annual executive-council meeting last week, they were in a grim mood. They were mostly unhappy over Congress' second refusal to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to enact right-to-work laws. Pete McGavin, executive secretary of the federation's maritime-trades department, spoke for many of his colleagues when he observed: "If President Johnson had put as much emphasis on 14(b) as he did on his wife's beautification program, the measure would have gone through."

That was not their only complaint. Union leaders resent Johnson's attempts to impose wage-price guidelines, which they regard as discriminatory. Labor was irked last year when the President allowed Congress to shelve the minimum-wage bill, and is now disappointed by the Administration's proposal to set a minimum wage of $1.60 an hour by 1968 rather than the $1.75 that it has requested.

Bounced a Bit. When Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz went to Bal Harbour to argue the "good sense" and "good results" of the guidelines, the labor barons were hostile. "We bounced him around a bit," one official said of the private meeting with Wirtz. A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany, 71, issued a pronunciamento that sounded like a declaration of independence from the Democrats. "I'm quite sure the labor movement is prepared to make its own way politically," harrumphed the old Bronx plumber. "I don't buy the idea that we have no place to go. Some of the Democrats seem to have the idea that we've got to go along with them."

Lower-echelon labor officials emphasized that the federation's Committee on Political Education would step up its activities on a "nonpartisan" basis, aimed only at electing liberals in this fall's congressional elections. In fact, this is what COPE has always done; most of its beneficiaries have been and will continue to be Democrats. Moreover, Meany was careful to steer the animosity away from Lyndon Johnson.

Ladies Present. An official statement by the executive council blamed Senator Everett Dirksen, Republican minority leader, for the defeat on the 14(b) issue. As for the dispute over guidelines, Meany said that the "arithmetic smacks of trickery" on the part of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Meany said that he could not express his true feelings about the council--which is also advising the President on the minimum-wage bill--because "there are ladies present."

Later in the week, having accomplished his dual aim of venting labor's frustrations and warning Congress that it would be wise to pacify them in an election year, Meany insisted that he had neither caused nor sought a split with the Johnson Administration. It was, said he, "just a family quarrel."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.