LABOR IN THE 1960s

Labor at High Tide

By the mid 1960s, labor's future appeared bright. Real wages were rising, union numbers were strong, and during the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson organized labor felt it had friends in the White House. With the advent of the Great Society the AFLCIO leadership believed the administration was picking up where the New Deal had left off in providing benefits such as health care to the lower classes. Working hard for passage of Johnson's progressive domestic program, the AFL-CIO won plaudits from many liberals.

Changing Work Patterns

Organized labor's apparent strength, however, was fleeting. During the 1960s the percentage of blue-collar workers (those generally in the manufacturing sector) as a proportion of the total work-force declined so that by 1970 the typical American worker was a white-collar employee. Fewer relatively high-paying industrial jobs were available for unskilled workers. Although the burgeoning service sector created millions of jobs, they either were low paying—clerical or fast-food positions, for example—or, because of the expansion of science and technology, required a higher level of education. Concurrently, many companies lowered their costs by moving their manufacturing plants out of the heavily unionized Northeast and Midwest (where labor costs were higher) and relocated in southern and western states with right-to-work laws (legislation that inhibited unions and resulted in wage rates 20 percent lower than in unionized areas). From 1966 to 1976, for example, northeastern states lost a million factory jobs, while southern states picked up 860,000 manufacturing jobs. Even more damaging, however, was the movement of jobs overseas. Large multinational American firms began to take advantage of cheap foreign labor. By the mid 1970s leading U.S. firms like Ford, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Kodak, and Proctor and Gamble employed over one-third of their workers overseas. The AFL-CIO estimated that between 1966 and 1971 the United States lost 1 million jobs to foreign subsidiaries of American firms. An AFL-CIO official explained that America was becoming "a country stripped of industrial capacity and meaningful work …a service economy …a nation of citizens busily buying and selling cheeseburgers and root beer floats."

Generation Gap in the Labor Movement

Rocked by a shrinking manufacturing sector, plant closings, and migration of jobs overseas, organized labor was also hurt by the general social upheaval of the 1960s. Many young production workers began to see unions' (particularly the AFL-CIO's) support of the Vietnam War and slowness to support rights of African-Americans as reactionary. Much like militant students of their generation, young workers often questioned the legitimacy of authority. Once viewed as allies, labor leaders were now viewed suspiciously at best and as part of the problem at worst. This tension between leadership and membership would only increase through the 1970s. By that time these internal struggles were compounded by layoffs because of a weak economy and the continued corporate policy of cutting labor costs by moving overseas or replacing workers with machinery.