Kennedy: The Classic Biography by Ted Sorensen Page B

union leaders realized that some legislation was unavoidable—and that the alternatives were a Kennedy labor-management reform bill to clean up rackets they could neither deny nor condone or a Knowland labor-management relations bill to curb their collective bargaining.
    The ensuing struggle, in which most AFL-CIO leaders supported both a constructive bill and their own voluntary code, gave the Senator his most intimate glimpse into the quality of labor’s leadership. Men of the ilk of Beck, Hoffa and their hoodlum friends were quickly isolated from the rest. But not all the honest leaders, he found, could wield power as effectively as Hoffa. Some, he remarked to me on a trip, had grown flabby through long years in power and were out of touch or out of tune with their members. Some were sterile in their thinking and relied on subordinates and attorneys. Some were mere figureheads not effectively in control of their own unions. Some, such as the leaders of the building trades and Railroad Brotherhoods, were effective because they concentrated solely on issues affecting their members and rewarded their friends in both parties. Some were idealists and reformers who rallied to every liberal banner and were often taken for granted by the Democrats. Some were great talkers and some were great “doers”—and some, like Walter Reuther, were both.
    At the same time that many labor backers were down on “the Kennedys” for their antiracketeering efforts, the labor baiters in business and Republican circles—many of whom had close ties with Beck or Hoffa—were charging the Kennedys with favoritism to Walter Reuther. When a thorough investigation showed no wrongdoing on Mr. Reuther’s part, they next charged the Senator with ignoring the real issue of labor’s “monopoly power,” and they pushed through the House of Representatives the Landrum-Griffin restrictions on boycotts and picketing.
    Businessmen also resented the Kennedys for their exposure of management’s collusion with racketeers—through “fake unions and welfare funds [and] so-called sweetheart contracts to keep wages low and responsible unions out,” as the Senator described it to one business audience. The President of the American Bar Association resented the Senator’s statements of concern over the organized Bar’s “apparent indifference” to those members who participated with the racketeers in raiding union funds. A variety of Democratic politicians also brought pressure on both Kennedys. When Jake Arvey, famed as Illinois’ National Committeeman and a Stevenson confidant, asked him to intercede on behalf of a client, Senator Kennedy told him only Chief Counsel Kennedy could halt an investigation. When Arvey and his associate then left for the committee office, the Senator called Bob and told him he thought the request “smelled.”
    As these opposing pressures grew, Kennedy’s determination grew. Aided by Ralph Dungan, Harvard labor law expert Archibald Cox and a panel of six other scholars, he drafted a labor reform bill, mastered the intricacies of labor law and, for the first time, truly mastered the legislative process. In 1958 the Kennedy-Ives bill passed the Senate by a vote of 88 to 1, only to be buried in the House. In 1959, after a long and difficult floor battle, the Kennedy-Ervin bill was passed by a vote of 90 to 1.
    Interestingly enough, one crucial roll call in 1959 involved the political fortunes of most of the Presidential aspirants. Kennedy, with vigorous help from Johnson and the support of Symington, fought a high-sounding but harmful “Labor Bill of Rights” amendment offered by John McClellan. To his dismay, it passed by one vote, with Hubert Humphrey out of town. As Johnson maneuvered for reconsideration, a tie-breaking vote in its favor was cast by Vice President Nixon. Later Kennedy and Johnson succeeded in getting this decision modified, causing Barry Goldwater to cast the only vote against the bill, and causing