Naturally, our friends had misgivings. Were these hearings simply another Republican ploy to bash unions, this time under  the pretext of a concern for workers’ rights? But the direction of the questions and the free-wheeling testimony proved quite  different. Mr. Fawell, who is not running for reelection, presided actively, but gently and tolerantly, over what often become  an informal cross discussion among participants. The hearings provided a platform for rank and file unionists, most with  complaints, but not all. Fawell was obviously attentive to their grievances but never suggested, not even by a hint, that  the solution lay in curbing the strength of unionism.

But the big opening event on June 25, not even listed on the program, happened by chance even before the formal committee  sessions were called to order.

What made this a great experience was the presence of a battery of rank and file Carpenters who came to Washington to  bear witness. A bus load of 30 or 40 from Philadelphia, led by William Rugh, all wore T-shirts inscribed "Carpenters for Democracy." 

Another delegation, perhaps 15 or 20, came from Baltimore. Clemens Wittekind was there from Michigan to testify. A half dozen  came from New York. And they weren't all of one mind. Most came to criticize McCarron; but others came to show support  for his reorganization plan. There were good unionists on both sides, and that difference of opinion provoked a lively  discussion of union democracy.

Before the hearing, the committee staff summoned a few of the witnesses to a big hall for what was to have been a preliminary  briefing. But it never took place because some 30 or more Carpenters, arriving early, piled into the room. With the committee  staff simply listening, and a bit overwhelmed, we ignored their preparations and plunged into a bang-up exchange on construction  trades issues, as energetic as any that has ever taken place under AUD auspices: corruption and racketeering, the right to vote,  blacklisting, favoritism in job referrals. As the views were batted back and forth, more Carpenters drifted in. By the time the  official hearings began, we were all warmed up and ready to go.

For some reason this second session was preoccupied with the Carpenters union, perhaps because its new president, Douglas  McCarron, has embarked upon a national reorganization program to centralize authority by mergers of locals, reducing local  autonomy, and shifting power to district councils. There has been considerable opposition to the plan in the union, and  apparently Fawell decided to air the differences in public. In any event, the Carpenters union provided the springboard for an  illuminating discussion of democracy in the construction trades. Each of seven witnesses got a flexible five minutes for a  presentation. I was the only non-member of the union. Then came five rank and filers, one from Michigan, four from New York.  Douglas McCarron, who was there to defend his policy, spoke last. Then the real discussion got going.

I opened the formal session by explaining how union members, utilizing their rights under the LMRDA, had effected a great  improvement in the state of democracy inside the labor movement. Serious abuses remain, however; the law should be  strengthened and the weaknesses eliminated.

As I sat at the witness chair, floor level, I could look up to the dais and see a staff member handing the chairman a copy of  AUD's booklet: "Union Democracy and Landrum Griffin," to which he referred from time to time, complimenting AUD and its  authors for their record of service. Obviously if Joe Rauh, one of the three authors were still alive, Fawell would have insisted  on hearing him too.

Clemens Wittekind reported that, in the course of McCarron's reorganization, Carpenters in Michigan suddenly found their  locals dissolved, their headquarters locked up, and the entire state reconstituted into a remote statewide collective bargaining unit.

Jack Durcan, a unionist for 26 years and a rank and file member of Local 608, spoke in favor of the restructuring. Durcan has  been a friend of AUD and has campaigned for democracy and against corruption in the Carpenters union for years. He argued  that a strong hand was needed to eliminate crooks from the union. "...our District Council was mob-infested," he said, "... forty years of degradation has been undone in one stroke by our General President."

But the other witnesses from New York were critical, charging that they were losing the right to vote. In elections under a federal  trusteeship in New York, Carpenters had elected district council officers by direct membership vote. Local members elected  business agents. But under McCarron's reorganization plan, council officers will be elected by a delegated body and business  agents will be appointed.

McCarron took his ten minutes to wind up the formal presentations, but he entered a bulky sheaf of printed testimony into the  record, most of it dealing with the long and sordid record of corruption in the New York District Council which impelled him to  impose a trusteeship.

McCarron makes a good impression, seems like an affable, intelligent union leader, one who is comfortable relying upon  persuasion and reason rather than a belligerent display of raw power. He departed from this stance only in passing when he  suggested that anti-labor elements would criticize his plan because they opposed strong unions that could stand up to the  right-wing. But he touched on this provocative charge so lightly that it almost went unnoticed. How he does it inside the  union remains to be seen.

The union, he said, faced a crisis. While whole sections of the trade were going nonunion, the union is split into fiefdoms  controlled by narrow-minded local officials content with their own private perquisites, unable or unwilling to organize the  unorganized, incapable of resisting corporate power. Unless the union could cut through these parochial interests and  solidify its power, it was doomed.

His reorganization scheme will merge small locals and submerge all locals into district councils with broad area jurisdiction.  The councils, composed of delegates from locals, will take over collective bargaining powers now enjoyed by the locals.  Delegates, not the members, will elect council officers who, in turn, will appoint business agents, negotiate and sign contracts,  control the hiring halls, and dominate all collective bargaining affairs.

To dramatize the urgent need for change, he pointed to the New York Council of Carpenters, which has been under federal  monitorship and which he proposes to reorganize according to the standard plan. His written statement excoriates the council in  words that could have been plagiarized from UDR except that his account is blunter than anything we have ever printed. He  charges that the council was dominated by racketeers, that union officials built corrupt machines by starving out critics and  intimidating opponents, that they sold out to the bosses, took payoffs for violating contracts and permitted bosses to go  nonunion. That, he argued, proves the need for his restructuring plan.

All that, we have known for years. Like most construction trades in New York, the Carpenters union was a cesspool of corruption.  If any union was ripe for reorganization, this was it. The real news is that McCarron is now saying out loud what reformers  have been shouting in vain.

Racketeering in New York was outrageous enough to justify drastic action by McCarron. But he defended his plan on  broader grounds, because the new structure was to be grafted on the whole union all over the country. Clemens Wittekind  explained that there was no crime problem in his state and yet the Michigan Carpenters have been subjected to the same  kind of new regime as the racket-infiltrated New Yorkers.

McCarron's testimony ended the formal presentations, and then a really thought provoking discussion began as Chairman  Fawell and subcommittee members threw out questions to the seven witnesses, and we tossed answers back and forth in a  kind of round table give and take. I was asked for comments on all the major issues, which can be summarized as follows:

Centralization and democracy: McCarron argued persuasively for the need to modernize the union structure, but he could not  effectively defend the measures that would undercut membership rights. Why, in reorganizing, is it necessary to ignore the  right of the membership to vote on contracts? Why must they lose all direct control over business agents? Why are they  denied the right to elect council officers directly? He had no convincing reply.

If it is essential to solidify and centralize the union structure, it is just as essential to strengthen membership rights to offset the  inevitably bureaucratic tendencies in any centralized structure. McCarron argued that the Carpenters needed a new structure  just as the early United States needed a new Constitution to replace the ineffective Articles of Confederation. The analogy is  apt. But McCarron forgets that precisely because the new Constitution created a strong central authority, a Bill of Rights was  necessary to protect citizens’ rights. His plan calls for central authority without the corresponding bill of rights.

Why direct election of council officers? McCarron's plan subordinates locals to the district council and then gives enormous  powers over collective bargaining to the council officers. But these officers are elected not by direct membership vote but by  vote of council delegates.

The system evades a basic requirement of the LMRDA. When the law was adopted in 1959, it required that local officers be  elected by secret ballot of the membership, and it established clear enforcement provisions. At that time, locals were the basic  governing units in unions and had extensive authority over collective bargaining. The right to elect officers gave members a  powerful tool to correct abuses by voting out corrupt or undemocratic officials.

The McCarron plan transfers all meaningful authority out of the locals and turns it over to the council. The locals become  powerless administrative shells; members lose direct control over the new center of power: the council officers. They still  elect local officers; but these officers become impotent figureheads. The new system is an end run around the LMRDA  provision for direct elections.

At this point in the discussion, the assembled audience of Carpenters burst into a round of sustained applause. The issue  was obviously close to their hearts.

Is election by delegates good enough? In New York, council officers would be elected by some 150 delegates. McCarron  insisted that this system afforded democracy enough because delegates would be themselves elected in the locals by  secret ballot membership vote.

Not so, was the reply: The delegate system is no substitute for direct elections. A membership of thousands, armed with  the right to vote, cannot be easily manipulated by the officers above. But a delegated body of 150 can readily be dominated  by an officialdom which dispenses favors and perks to only 76 lucky delegates. Direct elections allow the member-voters  to control the officers. Election by delegates allows the officers to control the delegate-voters.

Democracy and efficiency: In this case, it was argued, democracy must give way to efficiency. By centralizing power in  the hands of an honest leadership, you eliminate the ability of small-time business agents to exploit members, you protect  insurance funds, you end corruption.

The problem with seeking efficiency by undercutting democracy is that the cure creates the same kind of evils it is intended  to correct. Once a centralized authority, even the most well-meaning and honest, cuts itself loose from membership control,  corruption and irresponsibility follow, and not simply on a low level but at the very heights. Carpenters may be willing to  arm McCarron with extensive powers because they trust him. But who will follow him?

In one classical case, authoritarian efficiency degenerated into autocratic corruption. While John L. Lewis, a great labor leader,  ruled the United Mine Workers as an effective absolute dictator, sinister forces gathered strength within the union. When he  died, Tony Boyle assumed his powers and used them to murder his rival, loot the insurance funds, and betray miners' interests.

Strengthen the LMRDA? At the June 25 hearing and at the first session a month before, unionists complained of abuses  which went unresolved in their unions. McCarron insisted that it was not necessary to amend federal law to eliminate "impediments  to union democracy" because unions themselves could remedy any defects. A subcommittee member asked me whether the  labor movement had any effective appeals procedures for hearing the kind of grievances voiced by members at these hearings.

I said there is no such effective agency, certainly nothing resembling what we expect in normal public affairs. Labor union  government differs sharply from public government. Our national government is based upon a separation of powers among  the executive, legislature, and courts. The balancing of these forces affords citizens an important measure of recourse against  injustice. Union government effectively concentrates all these powers into the hands of the international officialdom which  makes laws, enforces them, and acts on appeals. Members have no recourse within the labor movement to any body which is  independent of the union structure.

Moreover, a two-party system dominates the political life of the nation; and, in the contest between these parties, citizens can  count on a measure of protection against abuse. But union government generally resembles a one-party state. The incumbent  administration is highly and permanently organized as a caucus, sometimes called "the official family." By and large, the power  of the membership is unorganized and diffused.

Oppositions, when they do appear, are usually thrown together ad hoc. It is precisely this concentration of power at the top and  dispersion below which made the adoption of the LMRDA essential, not to interfere with union self-government, but to make  self-government by union members a reality. A strengthening of the LMRDA is necessary to strengthen union democracy.

The hearing sessions recessed twice, about a half hour each time, when the committee members had to leave for a vote on the  House floor. My luck was that Paul Levy was in the audience so that I had lots of time to talk things over in the intermissions  and tap into his expertise. That turned out to be quite helpful when committee members, from time to time, called for my comments.

Summary: The exchange of opinion at the prehearing sessions, testimony and discussions at the hearing itself, and comments  during the recess periods make it clear that the reorganization of the Carpenters union has raised intricate issues. There is no  clear line up of good guys v. bad guys. There are good, dedicated unionists on both sides.

Those on McCarron's side were willing to assign greater authority to a central power as a necessary measure for eliminating  corruption and making the union more effective. Those on the other side charged that the membership was losing control over  their own union as power was centralized at the top. After McCarron's presentation, verbally and in a lengthy printed statement,  it was obvious that each side had it half right---but only half. The question now is whether these two views can be reconciled.