Marriage on the Rocks

When George Meany's A.F.L. merged with Walter Reuther's C.I.O. back in 1955, the event was hailed as a happy-ever-after alliance. From the A.F.L.-C.l.O.'s earliest days, the partners proved less than compatible. President Meany, now 72, a crusty, authoritarian craft unionist, was dogmatically anti-Communist in foreign affairs and staunchly standpat about civil rights at home. As top vice president, the idealistic, garrulous Reuther, 59, onetime boy wonder of the industrial unionists, tried to nudge the labor movement into the vanguard of social reform and international bridge building. Not only has Reuther failed to get his way, it is now also obvious that he has abandoned all hope of succeeding Meany at the helm.

Last week, after months of public sniping over the giant labor federation's course, the strained relationship approached the breaking point when Reuther, boss of the United Auto Workers, resigned from the A.F.L.-C.l.O.'s policy-making executive council, along with three other U.A.W. officials. Reuther stays on as chief of the powerful industrial-union department--a coalition of old C.I.O.-type unions within the A.F.L.-C.I.O.--but nobody knows for how long. At its next convention, in April, Reuther's 1,500,000-member Auto Workers union, the federation's largest, will consider whether or not to pull out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. altogether. With the Teamsters and United Mine Workers among unions already outside the fold, a U.A.W. secession, especially if other member unions follow suit, would shatter any illusion of domesticity in the house of labor, if not break up the marriage itself.

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