OPEN BREAK REUTHER VS. MEANY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600460021-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 17, 2000
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: February 17, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

h'roin: Cormionweal, 17 February 1967
Approved For Release 2000/Q8/03,: CIA-RDM600349
Open rea
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
SIDNEY LEN
CPYRGHT
the distance between them is still small; further along it
can become enormously large. The open break between
the goliaths of AFL-CIO, Walter Re-nther and George
. Meany, seems at first glance to be minor, even personal.
But as the song says, it can be the start of something
big, perhaps something of historical portent.
Reuther is irked at many things, at many levels of
importance, none of which in itself appears to be signi-
ficant enough to cause permanent rupture. Yet added
up they indicate that the two men are travelling in dif-
ferent directions. Both of them are aware of it, Reuther
to-such an extent that at one point he weighed the pros
and cons of withdrawing the auto union from the Federa-
The idea was given up in favor of what might be called
"living together, separately." But this may.be a distinc-
,Reuther is miffed, to begin with, because Meany has
. stoppee consulting him and no longer seeks a consensus
on major issues. When the AFL and CIO were merged in
December 1955, Meany as the president of the larger
body was given the top post in the wedded group. But
it was always understood that he would seek the advice
of the former president of the CIO and try to act in
unison. For a long time now that has not been happening.
As a matter of fact the small body of eight men-presi-
dent, secretary-treasurer, and six vice-presidents-who
were to act as a policy-making executive committee
where conflicting views might be harmonized, has been
buried without the benefit of a formal funeral.
The failure to establish this working relationship after
i t years reflects, alas, a deeper failure-the failure to
blend antipathetical social attitudes. Both men are dev-
otces of what is euphemistically called 'the "free enter-
prise" system. But Reuther is the personification of
social unionism, which demands large scale face-lifting
of the systc: -, Meany of business unionism, which is
highly uncomfortable with crusades. Typically, Reuther,
though lie is no longer the irrepressible socialist of the
1930's, wall wit: Martin, Luther King in Selma or
pickets with the grape strikers in California. The "honest
plumber," by contrast, not only eschews such symbolic
soMaMy,
ME oas s to is has never walked a picket
line or been on strike in his life.
For Meany the addition of a million members to the'
AFL-CIO in the last couple of years-mainly due to
enlargement of the blue-collar . force with the Vietnam
war and the growth in government organizing with an
assist by John Kennedy-falls under the nomenclature
"success." Reuther is painfully conscious that the AFL-
CIO today represents a smaller portion of the labor
force than it did at birth. The grandiose organizing plans
that were envisioned in 1955, in the South, amongst
white-collar workers, in agriculture and the service in-
dustries, have been stillborn or minuscule at best. And
though the AFL-CIO has pipe-lines to the White House
and, "friends" on Capitol Hill, it is not part of the "in"
group as it was in Roosevelt's day.
Reuther is distressed with the image of labor under
Meany. It no longer blazes trails in the civil rights field,
as it did in the 1930's. Its lobbying activities for social
change have the dull luster of a rockbound institution,
rather than, the flaming zeal of a crusader. When it
speaks for rebuilding the cities, more public housing,
better education, medicare, it speaks as an echo. It is no
longer the center of the liberal movement but a loosely-
tied tail to it.
In the realms of international affairs the situation, -
insofar as Reuther is concerned, is even worse. On many
issues, . Meany and the former gttneral secretary of the
Communist Party, Jay Lovestone, who, heads his inter-
national affairs department, is to the right of the Chamber
of Commerce-e.g., on the question of trade with the
Communist nations.
Reuther, like Meany, is an anti-Communist, a sup-
porter of the Vietnam war, an advocate of "strength"
through military power. But he cannot stomach the
"narrow and negative" anti-Communism of the Meany-
Lovestone clan. He has been chafing at the bit for years
over Lovestone's kinship with the Central Intelligence
Agency and his cloak-and-dagger operation.
The Lovestone issue, in fact, was' one of the immediate
causes of the schism. Reuther has wanted him tossed out
of the movement since 1955, but he has kept publicly
silent until the middle of last year when his brother.
17 February 1967; 557 .
Approved For Release 200Q/08/03 CIA-R.DP75-0.01498000600460021-6.
SIDNEY LENS as any editor of Liberation magazine and author of