THE UNIONS.

By Nick Kotz '55 and Haynes Johnson. New York: Pocket Book, 1972. 208 pp. $1.25.

The Unions is a newspaper report turned book which describes the status of labor unions in present-day America. The authors, Pulitzer Prize winning correspondents for the Washington Post, in which these chapters first appeared, taperecorded interviews with a cross section of union officials, members, and corporation executives. The picture which emerges from these interviews and the background research for them are not surprising: problems within the unions reflect problems in the general society of which the unions are a part

To begin with, an overall view of the unions is presented. Of a total work force of 80 million Americans, only 20 million are unionized. Although the public believes that unions include the poorer members of society, in fact union members average $3 to $5 per hour, with many workers making $l0,000 to $15,000 per year. Most of the 11½ Vi million poor workers whose income is far below these levels are not union members. Yet in spite of their minority position within the society as a whole, the unions wield enormous power stemming not only from strong bureaucratic organization but from an economic base provided by a $75 to $100 million monthly dues income. Within this framework, a number of specific topics are discussed.

First, the split between the young union membership and the older union leadership: the leaders speak in the rhetoric of the 1930's to a membership which has known only affluence and who "want it all now, without the overtime." Second, labor's role in politics is documented. The authors maintain that organized labor is the most effective political organization in the country today. With collective bargaining, organizing and jurisdictional matters delegated to state, regional, and industry levels, AFL-CIO leadership, for example, concentrates on influencing what the government does in Washington and who gets there: the election of congressmen and senators, not to mention presidents. In Pennsylvania, for instance, unions have identified 900,000 workers, their wives and families of voting age, complete with all vital statistics including most recent home address. Finally, there is a discussion of declining union strength resulting from low or non-existent membership in the fastest-growing sectors of the economy—such as wholesale and retail sales, government jobs, and financial services—and in the fastest-growing regions—such as the South and the Southwest. Even though the unions are in a minority position and may be actually declining in terms of relative strength, Johnson and Kotz argue that their power is much stronger than the unorganized 75 percent of the work force simply because the minority 25 percent is organized.

Perhaps the most profound problem described and one to which all interviewees, from George Meany to the individual sheet-metal worker, returned again and again, is worker alienation, loss of pride and craftsmanship which is widespread in industry today. This is the direct result of the job dominating the workman. In the painting industry, for example, where painters used to mix colors, blend, tint, and organize the entire decorating job, passing these skills down from master to apprentice, these operations are now done by machine. Among the meatcutters, whose personal knowledge and experience of meats and how to use them was at one time the basis of a close rapport between the meat shopper and the butcher, pre-packaging and emphasis on quantity and speed have resulted in a greatly reduced job satisfaction. On the automobile assembly "line, a man who places the same eight rivets onto the same part of 58 auto frames per hour for eight hours with only a 30-minute lunch break leaves the job feeling like a tool, not a human. Even with increasingly sophisticated technology, declining personal involvement in work has resulted in a productivity gap, and into this gap flow foreign-made products, making greater and greater inroads into traditionally American-dominated markets.

All in all, Johnson and Kotz have written a provocative, even disturbing work. If it suffers from newspaper prose (very short paragraphs and newspaper ideas) often pitched at a general-reader level, it contains a readable, informed, and puissant insight into one aspect of current American society

With a Diploma from Universitat Wien and aPh.D. from the University of Chicago. Mr.Bucholz is a member of the History Department.State University College, Brockport. N. Y.