Letter from Washington

Washington bureaucrats tend to study high rollers the same way that entomologists study spiders, with interest and at a distance. Bureaucrats are mesmerized by risk-takers, even though they shun risk for themselves. Lane Kirkland, AFL-CIO president, is the latest specimen to attract their attention by his once-and-for-all, canny or not so canny, leap into the political void, viz., the federation’s unheard-of pre-primary endorsement of a presidential candidate (Walter Mondale). A lot is riding on this crapshot.

Kirkland reads numbers as well as the next man, and he realizes that the tradeunion movement is shrinking badly. Thirty years ago, union members accounted for more than 35 per cent of American labor. In 1970, their strength stood at 24.7 per cent. In 1980 (the most recent year for which figures are available), it stood at 20.9 per cent—a decline of 15 per cent in that decade alone. Doing even worse than the average, the UAW was down 27 per cent since 1970, the United Steelworkers 47 per cent, the United Rubber Workers 31 per cent, the Teamsters 22 per cent.

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Washington bureaucrats tend to study high rollers the same way that entomologists study spiders, with interest and at a distance. Bureaucrats are mesmerized by risk-takers, even though they shun risk for themselves. Lane Kirkland, AFL-CIO president, is the latest specimen to attract their attention by his once-and-for-all, canny or not so canny, leap into the political void, viz., the federation’s unheard-of pre-primary endorsement of a presidential candidate (Walter Mondale). A lot is riding on this crapshot.

Kirkland reads numbers as well as the next man, and he realizes that the tradeunion movement is shrinking badly. Thirty years ago, union members accounted for more than 35 per cent of American labor. In 1970, their strength stood at 24.7 per cent. In 1980 (the most recent year for which figures are available), it stood at 20.9 per cent—a decline of 15 per cent in that decade alone. Doing even worse than the average, the UAW was down 27 per cent since 1970, the United Steelworkers 47 per cent, the United Rubber Workers 31 per cent, the Teamsters 22 per cent.