Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  In early January, Pierson raised a question of Venezuelan oil and mixed it with the public lands proposal. Udall began to feel that he was finished. In the State of the Union message on January 14, 1969, Johnson, after reading that lands had earlier been set aside for the American people, ad-libbed, “and there is more that will be set aside before this administration ends.” Udall had required total secrecy and now the President himself had “let the cat out of the bag.” Meantime, Nixon had selected Governor Walter J. Hickel of Alaska as his Secretary of the Interior; Hickel was testifying before the congressional committees and was certain to oppose the set-asides; and smart reporters now knew that a big plan was in the works. Congressmen were raising hell and Johnson notified Udall indirectly that he was upset because the secretary had not done his “homework with the members of Congress.”

  On Friday, January 17, the press broke the story. Johnson phoned immediately and Udall said, “was very unhappy and bawled me out good that he hadn’t made a decision and we turned it loose. And I pointed out that he had let the cat out of the bag himself and that we just couldn’t hold it all back.” Johnson snapped, “Hell of a way to run a department.” That was the last time Stewart Udall spoke to Lyndon Johnson.

  A few moments later Pierson called Udall and said he knew about his “rough conversation” with the President. He then got down to business. “If you get this Venezuela oil thing worked out, maybe that would get the President back in the right frame of mind and we can get it done this afternoon.” Udall blew up and then reluctantly agreed to sign off on oil.

  On Inauguration Day, January 20, 1969, the President signed the three smallest orders, a combined total of 300 acres in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and an enlargement of Mt. McKinley National Park and a new park above the Arctic Circle in Alaska. He stated publicly that the big proposals would “strain” the law and would transgress the right of Congress to review these actions. Among those killed was an order for a million-acre park in southern Arizona in the congressional district Stewart Udall had once represented and the representative for which now was his brother Morris. “The President,” Stewart said, “was trying to show me who was boss the last day he was in office. And he did!”

  How does one explain Lyndon Johnson’s aberrant behavior in this incident? His concerns for “straining” the law, here the obscure Antiquities Act, and congressional prerogatives, make no sense and were, obviously, window-dressing. It is unlikely that he would have soiled an otherwise impeccable record on oil at the last moment by bending to pressure. Much more likely, as Califano thought, it was Udall’s decision to name the new District of Columbia Stadium after Bobby Kennedy that “soured everything.”

  The Secretary of the Interior and the D.C. Stadium Board shared the authority to name the stadium. David Black, the Undersecretary of Interior, came up with RFK. Udall, thought it was “a pretty good idea.” Since the Stadium Board had stalled, Udall thought it would not act before January 20 and he did not bother to clear the new name with the White House. To his surprise, the Board issued a press release approving the name on January 17 during his phone conversations with Johnson and Pierson, too late to head it off.

  The President, evidently, was outraged both because he was not notified and because an honor was bestowed upon his arch-enemy. It defies reason to believe that he would carry on this grudge even after Kennedy’s murder, when RFK was no longer a challenge to his dying presidency. But Lyndon Johnson had a deep reservoir of bitter and irrational resentment.10

  11

  Failure: The Repeal of Right-to-Work

  LYNDON Johnson enjoyed extraordinary success in 1965 in persuading the first session of the 89th Congress to enact the legislation he wanted. It would be the triumph of his presidency. But he had a notable failure that can be read as a harbinger of others to follow. It was the refusal of Congress to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley amendments to the Wagner Act. At the same time he suffered a similar defeat over his proposal to grant home rule to the District of Columbia.

  For the century and a half prior to the New Deal American labor unions had maintained a precarious existence in a hostile environment. The majority of employers refused to recognize or bargain with them, often aggressively, including resorting to violence. Government—local, state, and federal, particularly the courts—usually lined up on the side of the employer. In a society that touted individualism, workers hesitated to act collectively through unions, especially resisting the payment of dues. In a labor movement that treasured jurisdiction, rival unions vied with each other to assert bargaining claims.

  As a result, American unions were insecure. Themselves helpless to change the environment, they sought security through collective bargaining. They persuaded or pressured employers who could hire and fire to engage only members of the union (the closed shop) or to require the employees they did hire to join the union (the union shop). In either form, if the employee failed to maintain his membership in the union, including the payment of dues, the employer would be obliged to fire him. Closed shops were common in industries with intermittent employment, such as construction, longshoring, maritime, and entertainment, where they were usually administered through union hiring halls. Union shops were more frequent in industries with longer-term employment, like manufacturing, transportation, and utilities.

  The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, called the Wagner Act after its author, Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, made union security provisions lawful under federal law. Section 8 forbade the employer to engage in five unfair labor practices, the third of which, intended to eliminate the company-dominated union, was to discriminate among his employees for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in the union. But a proviso to Section 8(3) said that a closed or union shop contract was not illegal if made with a union representing a majority of the employees in an appropriate bargaining unit without illegal assistance from the employer. As a result both the number of collective bargaining agreements with the closed or union shop and the number of employees covered by these provisions grew dramatically.

  But the Wagner Act and the National Labor Relations Board came under heavy attack from employers and their sympathizers in Congress, and the proviso to 8(3) became a prime target. In the closing days of World War II a movement emerged to persuade the states to make union security illegal, which called itself right-to-work. It quickly won support from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which feared the unionization of agricultural workers. This movement won its first victory in Florida in 1944 with a constitutional amendment.

  By mid-1947, when Section 8(3) was gutted, a total of 25 states had either enacted statutes or adopted constitutional amendments outlawing all forms of union security. Excepting Wyoming, which acted in 1963, the great majority of right-to-work gains took place in the forties, with a handful following in the fifties. By the late fifties, in fact, the movement was on the defensive. Six states repealed their earlier enactments. More important, in 1958 right-to-work suffered overwhelming defeats in three industrial states—California, Ohio, and Indiana. Thus, by 1965 the following 19 states had laws or constitutional amendments: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana (limited to farm workers), Mississippi, Nebraska, North and South Carolina, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. These states were overwhelmingly in the South and Southwest or in the agricultural Midwest. None was a significant industrial state. Politically right-to-work was a combination of the old southern Democratic-midwestern Republican coalition which had dominated Congress before Lyndon Johnson had become President.

  A great wave of strikes in late 1945 and early 1946 aroused public resentment against unions and the Wagner Act and helped the Republicans capture both houses of Congress in the 1946 elections. The first order of business in the new Congress in 1947 was to amend the NLRA comprehensively. It took shape as the Labor-Management Relations Act, known after its authors as Taft-Hartley, which was
passed over President Truman’s veto in 1947. It made the closed shop, but not the union shop, illegal in federal law. In addition, a provision was added to protect and encourage the right-to-work movement.

  Section 14(b) read as follows: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application of agreements requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such execution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial law.” This meant that a state right-to-work law or amendment took precedence over federal law within the state. Thus, despite the fact that Taft-Hartley permitted union shop agreements, they remained illegal in, for example, Florida, because that state’s amendment took precedence over Taft-Hartley.

  The labor movement, which detested the 1947 law as a whole, reserved its harshest criticism for 14(b). Politically, however, it was helpless until 1965 because of the southern Democratic-Republican domination of Congress. In 1965 there seemed a chance to eliminate the right-to-work provision. AFL-CIO had gone all out with money and manpower to help Lyndon Johnson during the 1964 election; it was the most reliable and effective interest group backing Great Society legislation; and it was now supporting Johnson’s decision to send U.S. troops to Vietnam. For a generation there had been no Congress as friendly to labor as the 89th. To be sure, as a Texas congressman in 1947, Johnson had voted both for Taft-Hartley and to override Truman’s veto. But by 1965 he had changed his mind. When AFL-CIO president George Meany asked him to support the repeal of Section 14(b), the President readily agreed.1

  In his State of the Union message on January 4, 1965, the President stated, “As pledged in our 1960 and 1964 Democratic platforms, I will propose to Congress changes in the Taft-Hartley Act, including Section 14(b).” Since this would inevitably be controversial, the administration delayed action to allow for passage of the education, Appalachia, and Medicare bills. An AFL-CIO spokesman said, “The measures he wants are things we want too, and we are willing to wait.” By mid-May education and Appalachia had been enacted and Medicare had passed the House.

  On May 18, therefore, Johnson sent Congress a special message on labor dealing with the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and the repeal of 14(b). Chairman Frank Thompson of New Jersey of the House Special Labor Subcommittee introduced H.R. 77, and Pat McNamara of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Labor Subcommittee, submitted the same bill as S. 256.

  Thompson held hearings between May 24 and June 8, 1965. Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz pointed out that “right-to-work” had nothing to do with the right to a job, that repeal would not make the union shop mandatory, and that the state laws created disruptive and unfair competition for lower wages between states. AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the civil rights movement, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and a small group of employers joined in urging repeal. Reed E. Larson of the National Right to Work Committee argued that the state laws protected the worker against corrupt and Communist-dominated unions that used his dues for political campaigning. Leading employer organizations and the Farm Bureau Federation joined the opposition.

  On June 3, 1965, the House subcommittee reported the bill by a 6 to 3 vote. The next day the full Education and Labor Committee agreed 21 to 10. Of the 21 Democrats only two from southern right-to-work states opposed repeal. Of the ten Republicans, two, Ogden Reid of New York and William Ayres of Ohio, voted against right-to-work. Ayres, who was from Akron, told Henry Hall Wilson that “any Republican who failed to learn a lesson from the disasters of 1958 in Ohio, Indiana, and California is completely stupid.” His constituents, the big rubber companies with southern plants, had problems operating partly nonunion.

  The administration and AFL-CIO worried about getting a majority in the House. This was because many Democrats from conservative midwestern districts feared that farmers would vote against them in the 1966 elections. The administration, therefore, created a farm-labor coalition. Urban northern Democrats, who would have voted against the farm bill because it would raise the price of wheat and so of bread, supported the farm bill in return for the promise that Democrats from midwestern farm districts would vote for repeal of 14(b). The Farmers Union and AFL-CIO worked hard on this political bargain and they got a big boost from Vice President Humphrey.

  On July 28, 1965, the House passed H.R. 77 by the close vote of 221 to 203. The majority consisted of 182 northern Democrats, 18 southern Democrats, and 21 Republicans. The minority was made up of 117 Republicans, 78 southern Democrats, and 8 northern Democrats. Humphrey seems to have been decisive. He was assigned 42 Democratic members of the House from rural districts in Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. He succeeded with 40; only the irascible Wayne Aspinall of Colorado and Clair Callan of Nebraska voted against repeal. His performance with the seven-member Iowa delegation was brilliant, all six Democrats.

  The Senate subcommittee conducted hearings on June 22–25, 1965. The same witnesses repeated the arguments they had made earlier. The subcommittee adopted H.R. 77 with an amendment proposed by Wayne Morse of Oregon on August 12 by a vote of 7 to 1. Several small churches forbade their members to join any nonreligious organizations. The Morse amendment would permit anyone who opposed union membership because of his faith to substitute payment of the equivalent of union dues to a charity. The Labor and Public Welfare Committee approved H.R. 77 by a vote of 12 to 3 on September 1.

  While the bill was before the committee word spread that the opponents of repeal would filibuster in the Senate, and everyone turned to Everett Dirksen. In fact, the minority leader had been turning over this question in his mind for months, and now the House action forced him to a decision. “Senator Dirksen,” Neil MacNeil wrote, “who never forgot his special relationship to Robert Taft, automatically opposed repeal of any provision of the law that Senator Taft regarded as his legislative monument.” Could he win? Both the Democrats and the Republicans knew that repeal would carry on a straight vote because 52 senators had already committed themselves. In mid-August Dirksen met with two of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, Carl Curtis of Nebraska and Paul Fannin of Arizona. They gave him a list of 18 senators who had agreed to filibuster.

  Dirksen visited his old friend, Lyndon Johnson, to see whether there was any give in his position. There was none. “I’m committed,” Johnson said. Dirksen replied, “Mr. President, I am also committed.”

  When George Meany of AFL-CIO came to see him, Dirksen said, “George, I’m glad to see you. How’s Mrs. Meany?” “Everett, you know why I’m here.” “Oh sure, I can guess.” “All we want is a straight up-and-down vote.” ‘George, you’re not going to get a straight up-and-down vote. I am no spring chicken, but so long as there is any breath and energy in this carcass, we will go ahead. We mean business.”

  Meany appealed to Majority Leader Mansfield to hold the Senate in around-the-clock session in order to wear out the filibusterers. But this was not Mansfield’s style; he would not break any elderly or frail member of the Senate. He stated publicly that he would not allow a vote based on “physical endurance.” There would be “no pajama sessions of the Senate.” “Why,” Lyndon Johnson asked, “do I have to have a saint for Majority Leader? Why can’t I have a politician?”

  The President informed Meany and Andy Biemiller, AFL-CIO’s lobbyist, that they would have the main responsibility for getting the senators to vote for repeal, and they accepted the burden. They spent a week in mid-September meeting with five groups of Democratic senators, all of whom agreed to work to break the filibuster. They doubted Dirksen’s claim that he had 26 filibusterers lined up. But, Biemiller wrote ominously, “They felt that round-the-clock sessions would probably be needed.”

  On October 1, 1965, Mansfield moved to make H.R. 77 the business of the Senate and “debate” on the motion opened on October 4. That is, the coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats under Dirksen’s leadership started their filibuster. I
n a maneuver on October 8 Mansfield moved to table his own motion. He urged those who were for repeal to vote against tabling. Dirksen countered by instructing his followers also to vote down the tabling motion. The vote was 94 to 0 to defeat Mansfield’s motion. The filibuster continued.

  Mansfield then petitioned with 21 signatures, five more than required, to invoke cloture with the purpose to begin rather than to limit debate. The roll call took place on October 11 and the Mansfield motion was defeated 47 to 45. While Dirksen had needed only a third of the senators, he got more than half. The majority consisted of 26 Republicans, 16 southern Democrats, and 5 northern Democrats. The minority was made up of 36 northern Democrats, 4 southern Democrats, and 5 Republicans. Dirksen had breathed life back into the Republican-southern Democratic coalition. But everyone agreed that, if the vote had been strictly on repeal of 14(b), Mansfield would have won by a fairly comfortable margin.2

  The vote on October 11 to defeat cloture in order to begin debate left a narrow escape hatch. There had been no vote on the question of limiting debate. On November 18 the President promised the AFL-CIO to “finish the unfinished battle.” In his State of the Union message on January 12, 1966, he renewed the pledge.

  On January 24 the Senate resumed consideration of H.R. 77. The following morning Mansfield tried to get the bill before the chamber by a special maneuver to avoid a filibuster, but Dirksen was ready for him. For the next two weeks there was perfunctory discussion of the merits, mainly by opponents. On February 8 Mansfield moved for a roll call on cloture, which required 66 votes. The vote was 51 to 48 in favor, 15 votes short. On February 10 he tried again, this time losing 50 to 49. The main change from 1965 was that all 99 senators voted in 1966 (Pat McNamara of Michigan had died). If Mansfield had any hope of increasing his support, it had been wiped out by a two-week strike of subway and bus workers in New York City in January. Mayor John V. Lindsay, who had been in the House for the earlier vote and had cast his ballot for repeal of 14(b), said the stoppage was the “death warrant.” Secretary Wirtz agreed. “It left a very bad taste in people’s mouths about organized labor.”