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...Francisco. The Postal Service responded by firing 100 workers. The militants refused to back down. Two weeks ago, at the Denver convention of the American Postal Workers Union, rebel delegates burst forth in a rancorous demonstration against their own leaders. The dissidents had powerful support: AFL-CIO President George Meany denounced the contract as "disappointing...
...sheer passage of time should shortly lighten one of labor's greatest burdens: its rule by aging, parochial leaders of whom Meany is the curmudgeonly symbol. Seven of the 35 members of the AFL-CIO executive council are over 65, and cannot cling to power much longer. Already, some slightly younger and far more aggressive leaders are rising in prominence on the council and talking of new organizing drives, new methods of enhancing labor's political push. Among them are Sol Chaikin, 60, president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers; William Winpisinger, 53, chief of the Machinists; Jerry Wurf...
Failure to expand membership, of course, is one reason for this loss of power. The smaller the proportion of workers that he speaks for, the less influence a union leader has with a politician. In Massachusetts, the state AFL-CIO, hit by sagging membership, lacks the $150,000 that it needs to computerize its lists of voters. Knowing that the unions' ability to turn out the vote has declined, Bay State politicos feel less obligated to court labor...
LEADERSHIP. Even his harshest critics agree that he is as sharp as ever mentally, but George Meany has saddled the union movement with an unfortunate image. In what has to be the understatement of the year, Chaikin, an admirer of Meany, ruefully concedes that the AFL-CIO boss turns people off because, "he does not have the personality of an ever-smiling, ever-effusive, warm, merry-appearing man." One university expert on labor adds that Meany's performances on TV "must strike the 24-year-olds, a quarter of whom are college-educated, as something out of prehistoric ages...
...that they are required to keep on reserve, clears checks for them. But its most important functions are to determine the supply of money and the level of interest rates?and no questions touch off more disagreement in American policymaking. If the Federal Reserve is not condemned by the AFL-CIO's George Meany for causing unemployment by being too stingy, it is certain to be damned by Economist Milton Friedman for spurring inflation by being too generous. All too often it will simultaneously incur the wrath of liberals and conservatives...