Leftward Ho! : Labor Secretary for a Post-Industrial World : Robert Reich signals a new era in American labor relations-the federal government’s uneasy attitude toward labor is about to be swept away.

The announcement of Robert B. Reich as secretary of Labor came as the only surprise in Bill Clinton’s first round of appointments. Of course, everyone expected Reich to receive a high-ranking post--he is a friend of Clinton’s, a fellow Rhodes scholar and contributor to the campaign manifesto, “Putting People First.” Only Reich’s destination, the Labor Department, raised eyebrows.

The brash, prolific Reich was passed over for the top economic-policy positions. He too strongly pressed his own controversial agenda for the “policy coordinating” function of the Economic Security Council. And without training in orthodox economics, he was too much a maverick for the Council of Economic Advisers.

Labor seems an unlikely portfolio for this man, one of the most aggressive and independent thinkers on Clinton’s staff.

For three generations, secretary of Labor has remained a second-rate job--a slot to repay friends and cronies, reward organized labor and make token political gestures. Both the first woman appointed to the Cabinet, Frances Perkins, and the latest, Lynn Martin, held this little-esteemed post. Reich has pledged to beef up the department; to expand worker education; promote employee ownership and management of large firms; incubate new industries and technologies, and devote attention to skilled white-collar workers, those Reich calls “symbolic analysts.”

But Reich’s appointment also signals the end of an era in U.S. politics and labor relations. Clinton has appointed the first post-industrial secretary of Labor. Reich will be the first Democratic appointee in years without strong ties to the Labor Movement. Other professors have held the office (Jimmy Carter’s secretary, F. Ray Marshall, for one) and other lawyers (notably, John F. Kennedy appointee Arthur J. Goldberg) but all had spent their careers on unionization.

Reich, though a persistent critic of U.S. management, has never been a friend of organized labor. His agenda--particularly plans for reorganizing factories for “flexible production” and building a cadre of scientists and engineers for high-tech growth--is not shared by union leaders. And Reich concentrates on the research-oriented and service sectors, not on the heavy-manufacturing industries where unions once thrived.

Such an appointment would have been unthinkable 40 years ago, when one-third of U.S. workers carried union cards. In 1953, even a pro-business Republican President like Dwight D. Eisenhower found it necessary to appoint a union man to the top Labor job. Eisenhower named a representative of the steamfitter’s union to his Administration composed mostly of business executives, prompting one journalist to call Eisenhower’s Cabinet “eight millionaires and a plumber.”

Eisenhower bowed not only to the power of organized labor in the factories, but also to its influence in the voting booths. The first political-action committee, CIO-PAC, had flexed its muscle for more than a decade. With the merger of the two main labor groups--the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations--in 1954, organized labor appeared ready to exert major influence on American life.

Congress carved the Department of Labor out of the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1913, mainly to assuage the demands of industrial and craft unions. The first secretary of Labor, William B. Wilson, was an immigrant who had worked his way up through the Pennsylvania coal fields into a top job with the mine workers. His successors included veterans of the building-trades union, the iron workers and railroad trainmen.

Today, however, only 16% of American non-agricultural laborers remain in unions--just 12% if government employees are excluded. In 1992, more Americans work in government than in heavy industry. Organized labor’s political clout has waned along with its power on the shop floor. Candidate Clinton distanced himself from union leaders. He has now appointed a man as Labor secretary, who given his proposals for industrial policy and flexible production, could just as plausibly have been named secretary of Commerce.

Reich, then, stands out (if not tall) among his predecessors--in his independence, in the breadth and ambition of his personal agenda, in his presumed access to the President. Unlike the three previous Labor secretaries, Reich is a man. GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush made Labor a woman’s slot, appointing, in turn, Ann Dore McLaughlin, Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Martin. But these selections betokened little concern for such feminist labor initiatives as parental leave, child care and curbs on sexual harassment. Bush appointed Dole and Martin because he wanted a prominent GOP woman in the Cabinet, and Labor was a safe place to stash one.

Reich’s appointment repays no political debt, another marked departure from the past. Harry S. Truman, for example, named political supporters to the office. Reagan appointed construction executive Raymond J. Donovan and replaced him, after Donovan became embroiled in scandal, with trade representative and former Tennessee Sen. William E. Brock.

Most Labor secretaries remain on the fringes--the President-elect introduces them during the transition and rarely sees them again. Martin P. Durkin, Eisenhower’s plumber, was so isolated that he resigned almost immediately because Eisenhower ignored his protests against continued restrictions on union organizing. John T. Dunlop also quit when Gerald R. Ford undercut his only serious legislative proposal. Herbert Hoover shoved his Labor secretary off into a corner, where he busied himself with a scheme to finger-print immigrants and round up aliens. Perkins succeeded in winning Roosevelt’s support for Social Security, though the President often condescended to the only “lady” in his Cabinet. Still, Perkins was out of the loop on Roosevelt’s crucial decision to support the Wagner National Labor Relations Act, the bill of rights for American unions.

Clinton and Reich envision Labor as the government’s principal architect of industrial policy, a rival to Japan’s MITI. The President-elect has named an advocate for “symbolic analysts” rather than hard hats, “collective entrepreneurship” instead of binding arbitration, more worker-owners and fewer manipulative MBA’s--a Labor chief for the post-industrial, information age.