Union Hall Frank
| 👷 | |
| Era | The Sixties |
|---|---|
| Age | 45-60 |
| Home | Detroit, MI |
| Demographic | urban, white, union autoworker |
| Lean | labour_left |
| Race | white |
Frank is a Ford worker in his fifties on the River Rouge line and a United Auto Workers member since the 1930s. He represents the industrial union vote in the Democratic coalition, liberal on pay and conservative on most other issues.
Who they stand for
The industrial unions are the largest organised force in Democratic politics. The United Auto Workers, led by Walter Reuther and more than a million members strong, is their political arm. The union funds campaigns, marches on Washington in 1963, and lobbies for the Great Society programmes. Union households form the base of Kennedy's winning margin in 1960 and Johnson's in 1964, and their reward is Medicare, a tax cut, federal aid to schools, and a failed 1965 attempt to repeal Taft-Hartley's right-to-work clause. Car sales peak in 1965, so through most of the decade this group is gaining ground rather than defending what it already has.
Race and the Vietnam War test this group's loyalty to the party. Dearborn, where the River Rouge plant stands, is kept mostly white by its mayor. The Detroit riot of 1967 kills forty-three people. In the autumn of 1968, a third of Michigan's auto workers tell pollsters they favour George Wallace for president, before the union's campaign pulls most of them back to Humphrey. Teamster Sal starts drifting toward the Republicans a decade earlier than this group does. Appalachian Earl represents the same union coalition working in a declining industry.
Playing to them
Frank responds to wage and pension gains, to Medicare, to a tax cut for working families, to a Secretary of Labor who comes from the unions, to a president who appears in public with Walter Reuther, and to a serious attempt to repeal the right-to-work laws. He accepts the civil rights bills as ordinary party business, and he continues to support a Democratic president as long as his pay keeps rising and his son is not drafted.
He does not forgive a Taft-Hartley injunction used against a strike, wage guidelines enforced on the union but not on the company, a president who calls him a hard hat, or an open-housing order that reaches Dearborn. Winning his support costs the support of Wall Street Henry and Country Club Richard on labour law, and the support of Texas Oil Jack and Prairie Ruth on the taxes that pay for the programmes he wants. Frank and Harlem James belong to the same party but live in separate and divided neighbourhoods. A president who keeps the support of both men addresses one of the central problems facing the Democratic Party in this decade.
Where they live
The five states where Union Hall Frank makes up the largest share of the electorate in the sixties:
- West Virginia
- Michigan
- Wisconsin
- Pennsylvania
- Ohio