Critique of Fletcher's 3 types

Fletcher's 3 types of labor leaders clearly has some validity, but I think it can be improved on.

First of all, the implication is that "traditionalists" are always right-wingers, and therefore pragmatists represent a swing-group that can align with the left, e.g. in the CIO. This suggests that traditionalists don't represent (at least potentially) a real interest-group within labor, or if they do, that it is illegitimate- usually, an exclusionary, and likely racially biased, group.

Second, the critique of "leftists" is muted in his analysis- when critique of leftists in the trade unions is as important, perhaps more so, than critique of the other groups.

I think it is more useful to think in terms of the 3 practically distinct functions of unions: protective, pragmatic, and dynamic. That these drift apart is perhaps inevitable in absence of a leadership which can integrate them, but it is only in the absence of solidarity (and the effective leadership capable of building it) that these functions come into contradiction.