Word: afl
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...conservative Georgia Democrat spent much time soothing largely Republican businessmen, while seeming to slight all sorts of cherished labor goals. Reflecting on Carter's lack of concern for such labor pets as common situs picketing, which would have enabled a single union to shut down a construction site, AFL-CIO President George Meany groused that Carter's record on labor legislation was "a lot of talking but very little action." Last week, in a major effort to woo back the unions, the Administration produced a veritable bouquet of pro-labor proposals...
...Labor chiefs have long complained that employers have taken advantage of various quirks in the labor law to hamper union organizing. This is one reason, they claim, why total union membership (now 20.1 million) has shriveled from almost a third of the U.S. work force in 1955, when the AFL-CIO was formed, to less than a quarter today...
Section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Act. which permits states to bar labor contracts requiring all workers to join unions. The AFL-CIO also agreed to scratch a proposal that would have enabled unions to become exclusive bargaining agents in a workplace if a majority of employees signed membership cards. The move, in some instances, would have eliminated the need for Government-supervised elections to decide union representation...
Meany may not take the advice; even if he does retire in December, his successor as AFL-CIO president would surely be Lane Kirkland, 55, the federation's secretary-treasurer and also a strong conservative. But either Meany or Kirkland may find the executive council something other than the rubber stamp that it has become; Winpisinger is expected to be a catalyst for change. At least four members are likely to vote with him to reform AFL-CIO policies: Murray Finley, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers; Sol Chaikin, president of the Ladies Garment Workers; Glenn Watts, chief...
Legislatively, Winpisinger would have the AFL-CIO lobby for broad social goals, like national health insurance, rather than concentrate on parochial measures like the common-situs picketing bill. He also would blunt Meany's hard anti-Communist line in foreign policy. Further Winpisinger wants to start a drive to organize blacks and other minorities (I.A.M. membership has dropped 100,000 in the past ten years). In general, says Wimpy, union members are not so conservative as they are believed to be: "They are not comfortable with the idea that they're supposed to hate people on welfare...