Against Housecleaning

For more than a year the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had been promising to support fair-minded legislation that would help organized labor clean its own rat-infested house. But last week the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council, meeting in Washington, sat in judgment on the relatively mild Kennedy-Ervin labor bill, passed 90 to 1 (Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater) in the Senate and awaiting House consideration. Labor's leaders turned thumbs down.

What the Executive Council most objected to was the so-called "bill of rights," sponsored by Arkansas Democratic Senator John McClellan and added to the Kennedy bill midway through Senate debate on the measure as a floor amendment. In a private analysis circulated to the council members, A.F.L.-C.I.O. lawyers pointed out that "arguing against these rights [free speech, the right of rank-and-file union members to bring court action against their leaders, etc.] is like arguing in favor of sin." But the bill of rights was in fact "an invitation to litigation, a fertile source of conflict between federal and state law, an improper interference . . . with legitimate union activities, and a threat of probably unconstitutional criminal sanctions." On that basis, the council directed A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany to lay the organization's objections before the House Education and Labor Committee next week. Even as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. leaders were meeting, a vastly powerful outcast from their ranks was dramatically demonstrating the vital U.S. need of new labor legislation. In Brownsville, Texas, Jimmy Hoffa, president of the thug-ridden International Brotherhood of Teamsters, threatened anarchy if the Kennedy-Ervin bill is made law. Cried Hoffa to a regional Teamsters' convention: "If such a law is passed, we should have all of our contracts end on a given date. We can call a primary strike all across the nation that will straighten out the employers once and for all." Hoffa's outrageous threat brought outraged reactions in the press and on Capitol Hill. Taken aback for once, Hoffa loudly denied that he had ever made such a statement. But no one was so stupid as to believe his denial. He had, in fact, made the statement into a microphone wired to a tape recorder, and there it all was, in Hoffa's voice.

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