George Meany

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George Meany bigraphy, stories - Leaders

George Meany : biography

August 16, 1894 – January 10, 1980

William George Meany (August 16, 1894 – January 10, 1980) led labor union federations in the United States. As an officer of the American Federation of Labor, he represented the AFL on the National War Labor Board during World War II.

Meany served as President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) from 1952 to 1955. As President of the AFL, he proposed in 1952 and managed in 1955 its merger with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He served as President of the combined AFL-CIO from 1955 to 1979. Meany had a reputation for personal integrity, opposition to corruption and anti-communism. George Meany was called the "most nationally recognized labor leader in the country for the more than two decades spanning the middle of the 20th century."

Public image and cultural controversies

President John F. Kennedy established the Presidential Medal of Freedom (not to be confused with the World War II era Medal of Freedom) on February 22, 1963. Two weeks after Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded it to Meany and 30 others on December 6, 1963. In granting the award, President Johnson said of Meany, "Citizen and national leader, in serving the cause of labor, he has greatly served the cause of his Nation and of freedom throughout the world."

Meany was well known as a cigar smoker, and appeared twice on the cover of TIME magazine with a cigar in his mouth. Meany stated that he had never walked a picket line, explaining that his union never needed to form a picket line, because the employers made no attempt to replace the workers.

1972 Presidential election

An anti-communist who identified with the working class, Meany expressed contempt for the New Left, which from the start had criticized the labor movement for conservatism, racism, and anti-communism and which in the late 1960s and early 1970s had many supporters of Communist movements, such as the Viet Cong. He criticized the New Left and later the New Politics of George McGovern for elitism. A cultural conservative, Meany ridiculed a proposal for same-sex marriage.

Meany opposed the anti-war candidacy of U. S. Senator George McGovern for the Presidency against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972, despite McGovern’s generally pro-labor voting record in Congress. He also declined to endorse Nixon. On Face the Nation in September 1972, Meany criticized McGovern’s statements that the U.S. should respect other peoples’ rights to choose communism, because there had never been a country that had voted for communism; he accused McGovern of being "an apologist for the Communist world". Following Nixon’s landslide defeat of McGovern, Meany said that the American people had "overwhelmingly repudiated neo-isolationism" in foreign policy. Meany pointed out that the American voters split their votes by voting for Democrats in Congress. According to Meany, class resentment was a major reason that Nixon won 49 states against McGovern, despite the dislike of the Vietnam War by a majority of American voters.

Vietnam war

Meany defended "the aims" of Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy in the Vietnam War. He criticized those labor leaders, including Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers, who called for the U.S. to withdraw its military forces from Vietnam, a policy that he predicted would lead to a communist victory in South Vietnam and the destruction of its free trade-unions.

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.

Charles Cogen, president of the American Federation of Teachers opposed Meany in 1967 when the AFL-CIO convention adopted a resolution "we pledge the continued support of American labor in Vietnam". Walter Reuther stated that he was busy with negotiations with General Motors in Detroit, and could not attend the convention. "Sniping" at Meany, Reuther issued "demands" "to make the AFL-CIO more ‘democratic’". In his speech to the convention, Meany said that, in Vietnam the AFL-CIO was "neither hawk nor dove nor chicken", but was supporting "brother trade unionists" struggling against Communism.