George Meany is a name that was in the news and was part of background-chat during my childhood years. ("What is AFL-CIO?" I wondered. Once I asked, and someone told me an answer.) And his name was "Meany." Like if someone was mean, you might call them "a meany," or just think it. But that was the guy's actual name.
Skimming through passages of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, the author mentions some of these guys whose names were familiar in the news when I was in elementary school and junior high and high school: George Meany, Frank Rizzo, Mayor Daley...And it's like, "Oh, hi guys! I had not thought of you, or been reminded of you, in a while...."
---------------------- [Encyclopedia Britannica] ------------ George Meany, (born August 16, 1894, New York, New York, U.S. -- died January 10, 1980, Washington, D.C.), U.S. labour leader, president of the American Federation of Labor -- Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from the time the two unions merged in 1955 until 1979, when he retired.
A plumber's son and a plumber himself by trade, Meany joined the United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters of the United States and Canada in 1915 and was elected business agent of a Plumbers and Steam Fitters local in 1922.
In 1932 he was elected a vice president of the New York State Federation of Labor, and he served as its president from 1934 to 1939. His work moved to the national level with his 1939 election as secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Upon the death of William Green in 1952, Meany became the AFL's president.
One of Meany's greatest accomplishments was the merger of two competitive and dissimilar labour organizations: the AFL, which was organized by craft, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was organized by industry.
His long tenure as president of the combined AFL-CIO made him the leading spokesman for American labour interests, and he used his power vigorously.
He transformed the nature of the U.S. labour movement from radical to conservative, preferring to achieve goals through lobbying and dispute arbitration rather than through strikes and marches. In 1957 he expelled the Teamsters Union, led by Jimmy Hoffa, from the AFL-CIO, and he lost the United Auto Workers after disputes with its president, Walter Reuther, in 1968.
Though Meany was considered tardy in supporting equal job opportunities, the program that he eventually approved became the cornerstone of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1963 Meany was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1977 he helped to lead the United States out of the International Labour Organisation when it refused to criticize repressive communist policies.
Labour historians note that during Meany's term as AFL-CIO president, union membership as a percentage of the nonagricultural U.S. workforce declined from 33 percent in 1955 to 23 percent in 1979.
--------------------------- [Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia / George Meany] ----------------------- Vietnam War. Meany consistently defended President Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policies.
He criticized labor leaders, including Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, who called for the US to withdraw its military forces from Vietnam, a stance that he correctly predicted would lead to a communist victory in South Vietnam.
In 1966, Meany insisted that AFL-CIO unions give "unqualified support" to Johnson's war policy.
AFL-CIO critics opposing Meany and the war at that time included Ralph Helstein of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, George Burdon of the United Rubberworkers and Patrick Gorman of the United Auto Workers.
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