‘Unlikely Partners’: the Long History of Ties Between Foundations and Unions

Soon after Richard Magat began work on a history of relations between organized labor and philanthropy, he told a colleague that he hadn’t been able to turn up any research on the subject.

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The friend wasn’t surprised. “There’s no research because there’s no there there,” she told Mr. Magat. “Organized-labor relations with foundations? An oxymoron.”

But Mr. Magat has proved the colleague wrong. An array of connections has, in fact, existed between labor and philanthropy throughout most of the 20th century, Mr. Magat discovered. He chronicles those ties in his new book, Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement (Cornell University Press).

“These connections have covered a wide variety of ventures — in the condition and status of black and female workers, the struggle of farm workers, the state of workplace health and safety, the union-democracy movement, and the stake of union members in such new economic phenomena as the global marketplace,” writes Mr. Magat, former president of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, in New York, and a 26-year veteran of the Ford Foundation.

Mr. Magat received a total of $21,000 in grants for his research. The money came from the Aspen Institute’s Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, the New World and Bauman Family Foundations, and the Program on Non-Profit Organizations at Yale University, where he is a visiting fellow. In addition, the German Marshall Fund provided money for Mr. Magat to travel to Hungary to present a paper on his research at a scholarly meeting.

Ties between philanthropy and labor often have been invisible to historians, Mr. Magat says. Organized labor sometimes has failed to acknowledge foundations’ interest in the issues facing unions. Often, though, the foundations have been the ones that have kept the ties quiet.

“The subject lies hidden in the shadow of major subjects with which American foundations have been preoccupied in their century of existence — education, medicine and health, community affairs, the arts, and, more recently, race relations and the status of women,” Mr. Magat writes. “Even when connections occurred, foundations were often reluctant (or outright refused) to disclose their role, or to permit their beneficiaries to do so.”

It sometimes has been risky for foundations to make too much of their union connections, Mr. Magat says, because of organized labor’s public image of being radical or dangerous, especially in the early decades of the century. “There was discomfort by some of the trustees, who were, by and large, business people,” Mr. Magat says.

One of the boldest connections between foundations and labor occurred during the Depression and New Deal era of the 1930s, Mr. Magat found. Unions forged ties with the nation’s intellectual elite as they sought to organize workers in the auto, steel, and mining industries. The Twentieth Century Fund, established by the department store magnate Edward A. Filene, was at the forefront of the union-foundation connections. The staff of the foundation, which is now called the Century Foundation, helped to draft landmark legislation that enabled workers to bargain collectively.

The foundation’s work reflected Mr. Filene’s pragmatic belief that unions and other collective organizations would enhance purchasing power by putting more money into the hands of workers. His “employee relations were based on his espousal of consumerism as the key to economic well-being in a capitalist society,” Mr. Magat writes. “If workers won their reasonable demands, he believed, they would have the wherewithal to participate in the economy.”

Mr. Magat’s book points to many other foundations that have supported union causes. The grant makers range from big foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford Foundation to smaller funds such as the Bauman and Hyams Foundations and the Needmor Fund.

Among those Mr. Magat profiles is the Russell Sage Foundation. Established in 1907 by Margaret Olivia Sage, the widow of an “unsavory speculator and financier,” Mr. Magat writes, the foundation was the “first to address labor conditions and the union movement, and set an example among foundations by attempting to ameliorate industry strife.”

Another is the New World Foundation, which was established in 1954 in the will of Anita McCormick Blaine, heiress to the International Harvester Company fortune. New World has made grants to the United Woodcutters Services, the United Auto Workers New Directions Fund, Southerners for Economic Justice, and the Teamster Rank and File Education Fund, among others.

Mrs. Blaine’s grandfather and father, both named Cyrus, were “bitterly anti-union,” according to Mr. Magat’s book. But Mrs. Blaine felt differently. In the grant maker’s words, she wanted New World to help foster “the ethical duties to society of business and labor.”

Mr. Magat suggests that the ties between labor and philanthropy will grow stronger in the next century. He notes that unions are working regularly with non-profit groups on job training, housing, and other issues of importance to grant makers. What’s more, Mr. Magat writes, “foundations are likely to become more sensitive to organized labor as more white-collar and professional workers become unionized.”

Still, philanthropy and labor are just getting to know each other, and their relationship remains anything but solid. “There still is an element of mystery to it,” Mr. Magat says.