situational pressures and functional role of the ethnic labor leader

Situational Pressures and Functional Role of the Ethnic Labor LeaderAuthor(s): Scott GreerSource: Social Forces, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Oct., 1953), pp. 41-45Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2572856 .

Accessed: 10/06/2014 16:29

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.180 on Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:29:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2572856?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


NISEI WORKERS 41

that the evaluations of Nisei by management representatives show evidence of an identification of Nisei as a group possessing certain middle class traits which, combined with a lack of certain

others, make them especially attractive to representatives of management in their search for em- ployees who will be both productive and con- forming.

SITUATIONAL PRESSURES AND FUNCTIONAL ROLE OF THE ETHNIC LABOR LEADER*

SCOTT GREER Occidental College

HIS paper grew out of a larger study of T ethnic minorities in the unions of Los

Angeles County.1 It is an exploratory study, based upon a highly selected group of informants- chiefly leaders of local unions with high proportions of ethnic membership. The purpose of such a study is to call important problems to attention and to suggest leads for further inquiry.

In this discussion the term "role" will be used in a somewhat vestigial sense; it should be made clear at the beginning that the concern here is less with the internal psychological field of the actor than with those gross regularities in the external situation wherein the actor must move. Such a framework places the burden of analysis, not upon the "self concept" of the individual leader, but rather upon the recurrent necessities of the organization-i.e., the conditions of a specifiable role.

Two aspects of the unions are singled out as especially critical for other features of the organization. The first of these is the external function of the organization, and the second is the reflection of this function in the form of pressures upon the system of roles, and the system of control, within the local. The guiding question for determining external function, em- pirically, can be put as follows: "What does a labor union have to do to stay in business?" In gauging the position of a given officer, it can be stated thus: "What does he have to do in order

to keep his job?" In answering such questions one may avoid an excessive emphasis on the formal blueprint of the organization.

The necessary functions of a union can be summarized as follows: (1) to express and channel the protest behavior of workers and thus exert pressure on management; (2) to achieve accommodative relationships within the institutional environment, thus allowing for organizational stability and the means to "deliver the goods." Arthur Ross has stated the reciprocals of these demands in four specific relationships.2 (1) The local must establish contractual relationships with management; (2) the local must "live with" some International union; (3) the local must "get along with" other significant unions in the locale, and, (4) the local must control its members. The importance of a particular group will vary with the sources of the union's organizational strength; no union will be free of such necessary relationships. (For example, certain locals are relatively independent of their Inter- nationals but are highly dependent upon the consent of the membership; others exhibit an exactly reversed relationship with these two groups.)

The organized centers of power which the union must "live with," or control, affect the necessary functions of the union personnel. This discussion will be concerned with the most central figure in the union, the professional leader-and particularly the leader of Mexican or Negro identity.

Certain propositions can be advanced for the positions of all labor leaders. The first thing to note is the relative instability of tenure. The

* The research upon which this paper is based was supported by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and by the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of the University of California at Los Angeles.

I Scott Greer, The Participation of Ethnic Minorities in the Labor Unions of Los Angeles County (unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles).

2 Trade Union Determinants of Indistrial Wage Policy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1949).



42 SOCIAL FORCES

leader is potentially vulnerable to displacement by his International Officers, to electoral defeat by his members, to raiding and strike breaking by other unions, and, finally, to "union busting" by the management opposite him. When the further probability that two or more of these pressures will conflict is noted, the relative insecurity of this leadership group may be assumed.

In the abstract the leader can be vulnerable on all four fronts; if one makes the minimum assumption that a leader is concerned with keeping his job, it is then plausible to expect that accommodation will be effected on one or more fronts. The first necessity for keeping a position is the survival of the organization within which the position exists, so the needs of the organization will exercise serious constraints upon the job the given leader can perform.

The sources of power for the leader are also sources of threats, and he must stabilize his relationships with some of them. So the union leader, surrounded by threats to his organization and his job, fights towards autonomy-or freedom from threat-but he stops halfway with accommodation.

In achieving a measure of accommodation, two types of conflict are likely to arise. In the first place, a conflict between the protest function of the union and the necessary conditions for industrial peace-accommodation with other centers of organized power-is likely to result in trouble for the specific leadership. The common phrases, "this is a company union" and "this is a trouble-making union," by members and management respectively, sharpen the outlines of the dilemma. When it becomes necessary to mobilize the members emotionally against the company, the dilemma will be seen as inescapable.

The second type of dilemma, resulting from the first, affects the principle of control within the union. There is a basic democracy inherent in strike action-hence the old union adage, "The membership votes with its feet." However, although this kind of voting may be an absolute necessity for the organization in some situations, the same kind of protest may easily be disrupting when delicate relations with other, more powerful unions-or with management-are in question. The greater the technical and political skill necessary to the successful bargaining union leader, the greater his difficulty in communicating with the members is likely to be. His position

exposes him to the organization's problems in all their complexity; the members see a much simpler picture.

Certain analogues come to mind, of which Myrdal's portrait of the accommodative race leader3 is the most striking. In the unions one also sees a group of leaders using protest to effect gradual change. The process.is one of continual bargaining-i.e., compromise. Yet the mobilization of the membership depends upon using a sacred and not a secular ideology. And in the unions, as in the race group, one finds a differential association between the leaders of the depressed group and the leaders of the powerful group, on one hand, and the members of the depressed group and the "management opposite" on the other. Given the necessities of bargaining, one finds a concomitant responsibility on the part of accommodative race leaders and union leaders alike to compromise solutions. Yet the power of the leaders depends upon their ability to mobilize the membership; this membership has a different frame of reference for understanding relations with the whites or with the company, and frequently cannot be appealed to in rational terms. The upshot is frequently, in Mannheim's term, "ideology"-or the solution of a factual conflict in interests by the application of verbal medicine.4

The research upon which this paper is based covers 20 local unions in Los Angeles County; the period of the interviews is from 1949 through 1951. Thirteen locals are AFL affiliates, five are in the CIO, and two are left wing deviants from CIO. Of the 81 professional leaders of these locals, 16 are Mexican and 8 are Negroes- together, 30 percent of the total. The proportion of the members in the unions who are Mexicans and Negroes is approximately 50 percent.

Although this is certainly not a major part of the union leadership in Los Angeles County, nevertheless the concentration and number would seem to make possible some effective pressure upon the union organizations and hence upon management, in the general direction of lowering barriers to ethnic mobility. There is little evidence of such pressure, and where it does exist it is usually ineffective. A useful heuristic question

3 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1944).

4 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936).



ETHNIC LABOR LEADER 43

here, then, is: "What constraints prevent ethnic union leaders from affecting the ethnic status quo?"

Certain statistics in the distribution of these leaders are important:

1. Mexican and Negro leaders are found only in locals with a high proportion of ethnically identified members, 30 to 83 percent; mean, 50 percent. In the usual case they exist only where their specific group is a major part of the local.5

2. They are likely to be the only person of their identity on a large staff. Average size of staffs having Negro personnel is eight; of staffs having Mexican members, five. Mexicans are found on smaller staffs in several cases; Negroes are not found on any local staff whose size is less than four members.

3. Fifteen of these leaders are elected, but nine are appointed. There is no difference in type of tenure by particular ethnic identity. Over one-third of each group is appointed.

The usual situation, then, is that of a single ethnic-identified individual on a large union staff, among an overwhelming majority of "Anglos" or "whites." The ethnic leader is ordinarily not chosen simply in terms of ability and identification with the union; he is a minority representative. He serves a special function for the union leadership-and for the ethnic contingent in the membership.

As the union's minority representative, his function is that of gaining the confidence of Mexican and/or Negro members, and thus strengthening the union organization. In order to do this, however, he must profess specifically ethnic goals-the gaining of equal conditions for ethnic members. His utility for the union depends upon his channelling protest within the local but not against the local. As a leader of a protest movement, he is subject again to the situational pressures of the accommodative leader: he has got to control ethnic resentment. This he can do only by expressing it, yet the necessities of his commitments force him continually to bargain for small advantages rather than to strike for a showdown. Thus he experiences in a redoubled form the situational pressures described for the union leader per se.

As noted above, two types of tenure are found

among these leaders: the appointive and the elective. Space will not permit going into the ramifications of this difference; it is sufficient to say that "electability" is the usual criterion for real leadership. The appointive leader tends to be looked upon by other leaders as a hired hand. Nevertheless he has considerable influence in the union organization; he is, after all, a full-time, informed, identified individual. He is close to the centers of power, though he may not be a prime mover.

If an ethnic leader is appointed, his double responsibility-to the race and to the leadership- will be heavily biased in favor of the latter. He is responsible first to his source of power; however, to keep his utility for the union (and to satisfy his own subjective commitments), he will have a responsibility to the ethnic members. Since he has little power to make basic decisions affecting them, he will be mainly a channel of communication, or a "front." At the same time he will be exposed to the esprit de corps of the leaders and personally identified with the union organization. So he will be very sensitive to the danger of an uprising of minorities which might threaten the basic conditions for operation, as the leaders see those conditions. For this reason, he will be able to press only for slight and, organizationally speaking, irrelevant gains. Many craft unions can be made liberal where Mexican or Negro access to apprenticeship is concerned, but not where crew selection by the contractors is in question. The first does not constitute a threat to necessary accommodation; the second would disturb employer relations likely to be seen as crucial for the union.

In summary, the appointed minority representative is dependent upon the top leadership and is not committed to the minority group members. He does not have such an omnipresent need of their support; and, by the same token, cannot afford to gamble his position on such support.

The elected ethnic officer is committed to the membership and is likely to be so committed on ethnic lines. He is also fully involved in the problem of administration-the reconciling of diverse pressures within a stable framework of commitments. He is likely to be faced with real conflict between his political commitments to the race and the commitments a union must make to stay in business. One high ranking Negro leader's

I For supporting evidence see William Kornhauser, "The Negro Union Official: A Study in Sponsorship and Control," American Journal of Sociology, LVII (March 1952), 443-452.



44 SOCIAL FORCES

alliances include: (1) communist factions in his own and other Internationals, (2) militant "race men" in his union, (3) a white supremacy group in control of one plant, and (4) the conservative and ethnic-prejudiced leaders of a competing union in the field. His own situation is unstable; his objective actions are so erratic as to provoke the judgment of opportunism; yet he is a "real race man," subjectively.

Each time an ethnic leader admits he is unable to affect the policy of the local or the management contacted, he risks some loss of influence with his ethnic constituency; as this happens he loses his usefulness to the union organization, and at the same time his own weakness provides issues for rival race leaders.

A common reaction to such a predicament is to play up the race question verbally, at the same time that one acts in a contrary manner in the course of work. Since, however, such an ethnic appeal usually arouses opposition on ethnic lines, the Negro or Mexican leader then has to deal with a "white" or "Anglo" faction in his membership. He is then in the position of "robbing Peter to pay Paul."

The conflict between organizational commitment and ethnic commitment has been emphasized so far. It must be understood, however, that the union leader faces another conflict: that between his personal position and democratic processes.

The status of the labor leader is ordinarily higher than that of his members, and this dis- crepancy increases as the job level of the members falls. The union leader's job is organizational and administrative, whether his members are photo- engravers or ditch diggers. His work is specialized and requires a high order and wide range of skills, yet his tenure is at the mercy of elections. These in turn are at the mercy of members who do not fully understand his work. (Witness the complexity of the Labor Relations Act of 1947, which few lawyers understand even yet.)

The conflict here may be seen as one between the function of the labor leader as representative of the members, on one hand, and as technical specialist hired by the members, on the other. The two functions may collide head on.

In this perspective, the tendency for locals to be controlled by informal "machines" is understandable. There is probably a limit to the instability which can be built into a given organiza-

tional position, if that position requires personnel of definite abilities.

When the position of the Mexican or Negro leader is seen from this view, two factors must be noted: (1) the Mexican and Negro work forces tend to be concentrated in the low status jobs, and (2), ethnic labor leaders are more limited in their job alternatives than are non-ethnic leaders, both in the union movement and outside it. The status of the ethnic leader is higher, relative to his membership, than that of other leaders, and is rarer, relative to his ethnic group's job opportunities. At the same time, the difficulties of communication between leadership and members increase as the educational level of members declines. These factors, together with the greater objective difficulties an ethnic leader experiences in keeping his job, indicate that the horns of the dilemma described above-which all leaders face-are sharper and closer together for the ethnic leader. Because of his relatively higher status and greater insecurity, one may expect an increased use of two techniques: demagoguery and the creation of a political machine.

There is evidence at hand to support the conclusion that the Negro leader is subject to these strains in greater degree than is the Mexican leader. The reasons seem to be tentatively as follows: (1) the Negro leader has access to the rewards of a relatively well-organized Negro community in Los Angeles; his status means more in social terms; (2) the Negro leader's status alternatives in industry are decidedly poorer than those of the Mexican leader. Con- sequently, the same barriers which limit the Negro union leader's job opportunities also have the ironic effect of increasing the rewards of his high status job. In contrast, the Mexican enclaves in Los Angeles are more loosely organized, and Mexican industrial labor has freer access to high level industrial jobs.

In short, the conflicts inherent in the role situation of the labor leader, as seen in this study, are as follows: (1) between the protest motif and the accommodation motif; (2) between the technical function and the democratic function. Both conflicts are intensified in the situation of the ethnic leader; the counter-pressures are redoubled. This is most severe in the case of the Negro leader, where (1) the protest motif is socially implemented by the "race programs"



NEGRO JOB STATUS AND EDUCATION 45

and the ethnic community; (2) the accommodative motif is strengthened due to a long tradition of accommodative race leaders, yet (3) his technical

function is much more difficult than that of non-Negro leaders, while (4) his valuation of his job is likely to be even higher than theirs.

NEGRO JOB STATUS AND EDUCATION RALPH H. TURNER

University of California, Los Angeles

AMPLE evidence from a variety of sources demonstrates that the Negro in the United States is disadvantaged in occupa-

tion and employment. Further evidence indicates that the differential in educational qualification is insufficient to account for the Negro-white differential in job position.' With some special exceptions, the Negro who attains any given level of education is unable to convert his training into as high an occupational position as would a white person.

The present paper raises a question related to the preceding observations. We shall ask to what degree education is related to the occupational position and employment of the Negro. A correlation between education and job status among workers in general has been demonstrated by numerous investigators.2 But the comparative degrees of correlation for whites and Negroes have been less fully explored.

The broad purpose of this paper is to test two opposing hypotheses, both of which are logically defensible. On the one hand it may be supposed that in those populations with a relative shortage of a certain type of job qualification, the presence (or degree) of that qualification will count more heavily than where it is plentiful. With educational attainment generally lower among Negroes than among whites, it might be supposed that a greater premium would be placed on such education as there is. Consequently the data for Negroes

would show a higher correlation between education and job position than the data for whites.

On the other hand it may be contended that the limited range of occupations open to the Negro and general characteristics of the minority position render such qualifications as educational attainment less relevant to occupational placement than they would be for whites. According to the latter hypothesis, we should expect to find the correlation between education and occupation lower for Negroes than for whites.

The theoretical question may be formulated in another way. Every individual is identified in terms of several different statuses. The several statuses that any given individual occupies may be highly integrated, in the sense that they are mutually supportive functionally and equivalent in prestige rating, or they may be unintegrated, involving lack of functional relatedness and marked by disparate prestige ratings. Viewing educational attainment and occupation as two of the individual's statuses, we may ask whether minority position makes for a greater or lesser average degree of integration between these statuses.

To test the alternate hypotheses, coefficients of contingency will be computed between educational attainment and occupation and between educational attainment and employment, for native whites and Negroes separately. Data from the 1940 census, tabulated from a 5 percent sample of the population, will be used.

EDUCATION IN RELATION TO OCCUPATION AND

EMPLOYMENT: MALES

Findings concerning the relation between education and employment for male workers are presented in Table 1. Measures of relationship have been computed separately in three age- groups. For measuring the total relationship between the eight categories of educational

1 Cf. Ralph H. Turner, "Foci of Discrimination in the Employment of Nonwhites," American Journal of Sociology (November 1952), pp. 247-256.

2 Cf., for example, Leland C. DeVinney, The Rela- tion of Educational Status to Unemployment of Gain- ful Workers in the City of Chicago, 1934 (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, December 1941); Percy F. Davidson and H. Dewey Anderson, Occupational Mobility in an American Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1937).



situational pressures and functional role of the ethnic labor leader

Documents