Where Is the Labor Movement?
I guess I wasn’t surprised that I was one of the few labor representatives at the recent Conference. The civil liberties question is not a simple or easy question for our movement to face. Few among us remember that many unions – mine in included – were victimized ruthlessly during the 1950’s. More than a dozen national unions were completely destroyed., and entire component parts of others were smashed and throttled. The federal government was hell-bent on using both legal and illegal tactics to crush the militant wing of the labor movement, extinguish political dissent, and do the bidding of big business to boot. Labor has yet to come to terms with the destruction visited on our movement during the notorious McCarthy period. Tens of thousands of good trade unionists were fired and victimized during that dirty decade, and for the most part the labor movement failed to recognize the extent of the danger until it was too late. The broad historical record is also clear; our government ha
