Forging Rivals: Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar Liberalism (Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society) by Reuel Schiller

Author:Reuel Schiller [Schiller, Reuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.

If any African American leader symbolized the changed relationship between the civil rights community and labor

unions in San Francisco, it was Bill Bradley (center, with beard and mustache), president of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Here he is in July 1966, outside of the San Francisco Hilton, explaining the

agreement that CORE signed with the Hilton to increase the hotel’s hiring and promotion of black workers. That such

an agreement might conflict with the collective bargaining agreement between the Hilton and the Hotel Service

Workers’ Union concerned him not at all. “I don’t give a damn about the labor unions or the collective bargaining

agreement,” he told nervous hotel officials.

Source: Peter Brenning, San Francisco Chronicle Archives. Courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris Images.

Not surprisingly, the leaders of Local 283 and the San Francisco Labor Council were

furious about the agreement. They were insulted by their exclusion from the negotiating

sessions and appalled by the outcome. (“This is the first instance in my recollection of

thirty years of representing organized labor … that a public agency in the City and County

of San Francisco has acted in such an arbitrary and insulting manner to organized labor,”

wrote the Local’s attorney, Roland Davis.) The agreement was an “intrusion into

collective bargaining” that violated the contract between the hotels and the unions that

represented their workers. Accordingly, they intended to “resist” it, although the nature of

that resistance was left unspecified. 59 At the end of September, they issued a provocative

“Statement of Policy of Organized Labor in San Francisco with Respect to Equal

Employment Opportunities.”

The statement, which was signed by Johns, Dan DelCarlo, and Joseph Diviny of the

Building Trades Council and the Teamsters, respectively, and Bridges, reaffirmed the labor

movement’s commitment to fair employment practices. The statement argued, as had the

entire labor movement since the late 1940s, that the solution to African American

unemployment and underemployment was a governmental commitment to job creation

and improving the qualifications of black workers through education and training

programs. 60 The bulk of the statement, however, was a thinly veiled attack on the agreement. While the Labor Council would cooperate with “responsible civil rights

groups” to “secure more and better jobs for all,” it “expects and demands complete respect

for its collective bargaining agreements, and the rights of its members thereunder to

employment according to their qualifications.” Particularly troubling to the Council was

the possibility of “other private group[s] or organization[s]” inserting themselves into the

relationship between a union and the employer it had negotiated a contract with. Equally

horrifying was the idea that a government agency would sanction an agreement between

an employer and these other groups. The labor movement had worked long and hard to

ensure that it had the exclusive power to represent workers in their negotiations with an

employer. Similarly, it had crafted a regime of labor relations that depended on particular

institutions – mutually chosen arbitrators and the National Labor Relations Board – to

resolve disputes. According to the Labor Council, by subverting this regime, groups that

sought to further their interests through side agreements with employers simply played

into the hands of the enemies of organized labor and thus undermined the rights of all

workers, regardless of their race.

The NAACP’s response was rapid and bitter. In a letter that he also sent to the press,

San Francisco branch president Arthur Lathan wrote to Johns, informing him that he was

“perplexed” by the Statement’s implication that civil rights organizations sought to

involve themselves in union business. 61 The NAACP, quite frankly, did not have the resources to address all the complaints that African American workers had about

workplace discrimination. Indeed, when he received such complaints from workers in

union shops (which he did, “almost daily”), Lathan claimed that he simply informed them

of their rights under the CBA. The only reason that the NAACP would become involved at

all in labor-management relations was “because your members … have received less than

adequate representation.” According to Lathan, the quality of representation that black

workers received in the city’s unions was little different from what they might have

expected in a Jim Crow auxiliary:

Most members are bitter and feel their membership is only to enrich the coffers of

the union with bare minimum services intended. They complain that these services

consist primarily of occasionally renegotiating a contract that hardly covers the

cost of living increase since the last contract, and this without even the threat of a

strike. Almost unanimously, they sincerely believe that the union is in collusion

with the employer at the member’s expense. They remark that they are not made

aware of any fringe benefits and seldom know even when meetings are scheduled.

Lathan then touched on a subject sure to get Johns’ attention. A number of workers “have

offered the opinion that they would fare better under ‘Right-to-Work’ laws where at least

the saving of their union dues can supplement their meager wages.” He concluded with a

sarcastic offer: “we would be most happy, even delighted, to abdicate this responsibility

[to fight employer discrimination] to you and cease our questionable involvement any

time the unions are ready to fill this void.”

Lathan’s letter was provocative, to say the least. Besides raising the right-to-work

specter, it implied that unions were incapable of performing even their most basic

functions for African American workers. They couldn’t even get them a decent wage.

Cleverly, it avoided the obvious criticism that civil rights groups leveled against unions –

that the unions themselves refused to admit black workers – and instead focused on a

problem that was less easy to dodge with simple pledges to reform a few “deviant” locals:

namely, that even unions with substantial black memberships were unresponsive to the

needs of that membership. The members of the Labor Council clearly believed that such

claims were untrue, and Johns, frantically trying to preserve good relations with the

NAACP, labor’s most consistent ally in the civil rights movement, repeatedly tried to meet

with Lathan, who, curiously, never seemed to be in the office when Johns called. 62

The outcome of the Hilton Hotel dispute had serious repercussions for the

negotiations over the HRC’s ordinance. The 1966 agreement was the Labor Council’s

nightmare come to life: the resolution of a civil rights dispute in a unionized workplace in

which the union was pushed aside and in which the rights established by the collective

bargaining agreement, including its arbitration mechanisms, were ignored. This was

exactly the type of situation the Council was trying to avoid with its amendments to the

ordinance. Furthermore, the behavior of the HRC in brokering the deal at the same time

that it was resisting those amendments poisoned the relationship between the Council and

the HRC. Johns alleged that the HRC’s negotiations with the Council over the ordinance

had not been in good faith because all along the HRC had as its goal the “intrusion into

collective bargaining” and a “challenge to the rights of workers” under their collective

bargaining agreements. 63 The HRC had become nothing more than a pawn not only of the city’s civil rights groups, but also of the Chamber of Commerce in its goal of weakening

the city’s unions. 64

The Council’s new suspicions of the HRC’s good faith caused it to request, in early

August, that the Board of Supervisors delay voting on the ordinance, even with the

amendments the Council favored. 65 Until the Council and the HRC could reestablish trust, Johns believed, it would be impossible for the two to work together as the amended

ordinance required. A two- or three-month delay would give time for “improvements in

relationships” and allow the “present disturbing aspects” of the relationship between the

Council and the HRC to be resolved. 66 Although the HRC objected to the delay, the Board

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