ABSTRACT
The American unions, like their British colleagues, have not sought far-reaching socio-political change; the movement has not acted out a social conscience role, despite appearances to the contrary. Perlman derived his conclusion about American workers’ ‘psychology’ largely from observation of the skilled workmen or ‘mechanics’ (the term which they still prefer) who were then the predominant influence in the American Federation of Labor. Indeed, the anti-communist features of Taft-Hartley, combined with the investigative avidity of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which continued to grow in importance despite the removal of Dies, became useful to many aspiring Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) leaders. Although the American Federation of Labor-CIO had worked for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, its ‘backbone’ unions had continued to practise de facto racial exclusion. The pressure from Negroes, from the federal government, from some unionists and from social developments did not lead the crafts to yield their historic bar to penetration of the trades.
