Whose Ox?

In more than four decades of bitter battling, David Dubinsky, 70, has built among the teeming sweatshops of Manhattan's garment district one of the nation's most powerful industrial unions. But, for the past 19 months the indomitable and volcanic president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (fondly but cautiously dubbed "Papa" by his rank and file) has been fighting a surprisingly different kind of battle. This time Papa Dubinsky is out to break a union. His victim: the Federation of Union Representatives (FOUR), which was organized as a "union within a union" by the I.L.G.W.U.'s own organizers, business agents and educational employees.

Insisting that they too are entitled to bargain for better wages and working conditions, FOUR leaders last April won from the National Labor Relations Board the right to conduct a representation election among I.L.G.W.U. staff members. The outcome of the vote was left hanging on the fate of two contested ballots--one cast by FOUR's president, the other by a top aide. Both men had been dismissed by the I.L.G.W.U. for alleged violations of "union ethics" before the vote. Last week the NLRB virtually assured FOUR's victory by decreeing that the two disputed (and still unopened) ballots must be opened and counted this week.

Despite Dubinsky's bitter protests, "unions within unions" are not uncommon. They already exist among staff members of at least nine U.S. unions, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers. Says the Electrical Workers' President James Carey: "As an employer, I believe in practicing what I preach."

Dubinsky, however, does not regard himself as just an employer. Garment union staffers, he argues, are not "just job holders," but rather "missionaries out to convert the unorganized." As he sees it, the leaders of FOUR "can only be prompted by the commercialism of our times," and are out to create "dual loyalties" within his union. To avert that calamity, Dubinsky has decided upon a course taken by many a capitalist before him: he vows to fight the NLRB ruling through every possible court, a process which could delay FOUR's recognition as a certified bargaining agent for another year and a half.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.