*FOR LABOR: ONE TO GROW ON

On the first birthday of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. merger, one of the U.S.'s top labor reporters, New York Timesman A. H. Raskin, gave the "brawling infant" one to grow on in the Times's Sunday Magazine. Excerpts:

UNION leaders still talk to their members in depression-born slogans that sound as incongruous in our full-employment economy as a campaign to make "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" the national anthem. In the union lexicon, the term "Big Business" remains shorthand for everything that is evil. Yet the most substantial victories won by unions at the bargaining table have come from the giants of industry. It was the United States Steel Corp. that gave unionism a bloodless foothold in the mass production industries 20 years ago. It was Ford and General Motors that capitulated to the "guaranteed annual wage." At every intermediate period since the New Deal, unions have relied on "Big Business" to set the pattern of labor gains. The result of cordial day-to-day relations over a long period is a dichotomy that translates out something like this: All "Big Business" is bad except the particular "Big Business" we happen to deal with. Coal producers have been at such pains to be on friendly terms with the United Mine Workers' John L. Lewis that their principal concern in selecting a bargaining representative was to find a man of whom Lewis would approve. This represents the ultimate extension of the historic principle of the Wagner Act that workers have a right to be represented in collective bargaining by unions of their own choosing. Now the workers not only pick their own bargaining representative, but, in effect, pick the employers' bargaining representative as well.

Closing the Gap. Estrangement between the union's officials and its rank-and-file becomes especially hard to overcome in the mammoth organizations that bargain for hundreds of thousands of members. It is virtually impossible to make the individual feel that he has a real voice in establishing the wages or conditions under which he works. The increasing popularity of long-term contracts is bound to make this sense of detachment even more pervasive. All this points up the need for improved channels of communication between union leaders and members, plus a broadening of union functions in education, recreation, civic affairs and other fields that will bind the rank-and-file closer to the organization in periods when there are no new contracts to get excited about.

But this is not the only area in which union communications falter to the detriment of their long-range security and their acceptance as a mainstay of our free enterprise economy. At the same time that they repair their relations with their members, unions must do a more consistent job of demonstrating to the public that their goal is to go forward with the total community, and not to win gains at the expense of the community. Nowhere is this task more urgent than in the field of inflation control. Unfortunately, in the minds of many who have been worst hit by the cheapening of the money supply, most of the blame belongs to the unions.

Built-in Protection. According to these critics, prices soar every time unions get more money for their members, and that is what sparks inflation. The guilt of unions, in this view, is heightened by the inclusion in many contracts of clauses that shield the union members against any loss of purchasing power when prices go up. Not only do these escalator provisions give built-in protection against the inflation the unions are accused of starting, but they contribute to further inflation by raising production costs and pumping more money into circulation.

If all this were an accurate appraisal of the causes of inflation, unions would clearly belong in the category of anti-social institutions. But the sharp rise that has taken place in the standard of living of all Americans in the years in which unions have been coming to power makes it plain that the factors that touch off inflation are a good deal more complex than the explanations of those who say it is all the fault of higher wages.

The fact is that in most major negotiations the union comes in with a comprehensive economic brief, intended to prove that its members can get substantial improvements in wages and "fringe" benefits without forcing higher prices or depriving the company of a fair profit. Unhappily for the consumer, the union is too often content to confine this proof to the privacy of the bargaining chamber. Once the employer has signed a mutually acceptable wage settlement, the union is likely to lose interest in what happens to prices.

The Job Ahead. Unions exist, and will continue to exist, primarily to guard and extend the economic welfare of their members. But in our interrelated economy, no bread-and-butter function can be divorced from the larger considerations of the body politic. To win its battles, and even better, to avoid the necessity of fighting them, labor will have to learn to speak to its own rank and file in terms that make more sense than some of the moth-eaten maxims of today. And it will have to convince the rest of America that labor really means it when it says unionists are citizens first.

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