I have a lot of people to thank. I would like to thank rosemary. I would like to thank mark and his wife were driving alice and myself down here. I would like to thank [applause] a serious mistake. I i would like to thank the letter carrier. When. When i was a little boy my parents gave me a book called they carried the mail. I only remember one sentence neither neither snow, nor sleet, nor rain, nor dark of night shall save these careers from the swift completion of their appointed routes which i believe were words sponsored by the king of babylonia i dont no how many hundreds of thousands of words we speak, but we should all be aware of the struggle of the letter carriers. Facilities are being closed down. That seems to be the same in youngstown, ohio. This summer they are closing the Distribution Center so that henceforth when you mail a letter in youngstown lets say to the the super max prison a 20 minute drive from our home that letter will henceforth go to cleveland and then come back to youngstown. We are also aware of the contracting out. Alice and i have gone to considerable trouble to buy whatever paper, envelopes, what have you we needed from christmas someplace else. I am going to thank charlie and mike. As you will see i have some particular ways in mind of thanking them. I think most of whatever i am able to do in my ode to my parents and in particular to a summers experience of my father once he became famous for middletown, and academic it did not go so well well, but when i found out about the summer of his life i think it rolled the dice as to what kind of person i would become. My dad flew to Union Theological seminary in new york city more or less across the street from columbia. It apparently was the practice there that between the 1st and 2nd years of Divinity School a student would go to some community that did not have a regular preacher minister priest and perform that service for one summer. Somehow i kicked myself that i did not find out more about exactly why. Somehow my father wound up being assigned to rockefeller in my wyoming. The early 1920s. He arrived by stagecoach. As i understand it the 1st afternoon he found a boarding house came to the supper table and noticed something. He decided probably what the guys were feeling was who is this handsome young guy from the east while i am out there working 16 hours a day for mr. Rockefeller . What else you have to do . You will be visiting our wives. Somehow he picked that out of the air and after supper found the foreman and got a job as a pick and shovel labor. It is the single thing about him of which i am most proud. There are all kinds of stories as you might imagine. My father would work with the men monday through saturday. He could not give a sermon on sunday. In in the evening when you cannot cast a fly any longer , he would preach in the schoolhouse, and what i remember about that is that there was a certain gentleman who stood by the front door. And as my father passed the hat this man would call out walking against the hat. [laughter] after the summer was over my dad had an exchange with John D Rockefeller and wrote a letter to mr. Rockefeller in which he said that it was a tedious and lonely thing particularly for the women to live in elk basin, wyoming and might it be possible for mr. Rockefeller to give a contribution towards the creation of a community center. He got a letter back saying it had been a bad year for standard oil. [laughter] mr. Rockefeller could not manage a contribution. [laughter] you can see the bending of the twig, the formation of family values. And what i want to do by way of let me see, a present to mike. There it is. Mike mike, elk basin was about 175 miles east of puke montana, which was the center of the copper industry according to a wonderful new book about the iww the iww had a strong direct action presence in the area through world war i, but by the time my dad spent a summer in elk basin the iww had been crushed by the anaconda trucker company. Some of the workers, the militant rankandfile workers who did copper had drifted east to the Rockefeller Oil field and brought their songs with them. In any in any case, my dad did bring a song about copper miners my wife has been after me for 20 20 or 30 years to make sure that there was someone to remember it from me. What do you know . That you. [laughter] so i im going to sing the song and then give you the case and the words. What it stands for the influence on me of my dad and a way of understanding my life is to turn an effort to turn into a way of life that he had created for a summer. And i understand [laughter] the verse after next the Copper Mining equivalent of consumption. And a missed whole is a dynamite charge that was not exploded so that when some minor puts his pick in it bad things happen. [applause] [applause] [applause] im not done yet. [laughter] i want to talk about the experience the beginning of so much in different ways. He forgot to mention that when i was putting together a book of essays and thought to myself where in the world is guerrilla history. He called up and said, i found it. Reorganizing his own library he had somehow come across that essay and i want to tell you about that essay and how it came into being because it is really that which informs the larger part of the book that you may buy steel or borrow. Charlie, pure. [laughter] [laughter] charlie pointed out that in the year after we 1st met. [inaudible] the rank and file we were excited about the idea of using microphones. We did what could have easily been called the teaching about labor history from the viewpoint of the rank and file at the Community College where charlie taught. I i have been worried that you might forget those initial things you sponsored. Therefore, it is my pleasure to present to you this reproduction. [applause] [applause] thank you. So my idea and to a degree my life upside down the 2nd session of our threepart forum where two men spoke to steelworkers. The 1st was an africanamerican man. The theme of his remarks was your dog dont bark no more talking about the trade union moment and talked about the way he felt in the 30s when cio locals 1st came into existence. They became involved in issues like the scottsboro boys, young black man falsely accused of rape in alabama and other Community Issues as well as the narrow workplace issues of hours of work rates of pay important as those are. And then john got up to speed. Now it turned out that he was the 1st president of the cio local in the gigantic steel facility in east chicago indiana with a i think, of 18,000. We are not talking about a food coop, a health food store, a small enterprise. We are talking about one of the commanding heights of the United States economy. I did not know exactly what john was going to say. I met him and talked with him some, but what he did say, if you want the complete text is in another book in the back called the rank and file. Remember, if you we will that january of 1937 was the sit in at the General Motors plant in flint where the uaw one bargaining status for its own not initially for the of the plan but its own. It was in fact initially practicing what professor morris wrote a book about now called members only. Then us steel later on that year recognized the united steelworkers of america and historians wonder if there was some overlap between the bargaining directors of us steel and the board of directors of General Motors so that the us steel 1 percent to not want to undergo what the General Motors 1 percent had undergone shortly before. That list was everyone except us steel. That is what happened. They went on strike in the spring of 1937 experienced the famous and tragic memorial day massacre in South Chicago and according to almost universal belief they lost. They were not not recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent for all those different kind of steelworkers. And those who consider the strike as a failure remedied only during world war ii when the steelworkers were finally recognized those who considered the strike was a failure include for example, our beloved and departed comrade martin wayne berman, who we lost to a catastrophe. John sargent president of that huge local three or four different times. Stood before us that night. It was hot. I remember him sweating. He he died of a heart attack a few years later and said that the little strike was a victory of great portions. Those were his words. What in the world could he have meant . I guess i have expended a large proportion of the last quarter century of my life or more trying to understand what he meant. As you do with something you care about to walk around it look at it from different points of view to explore it in a colloquial way talking to retirees academics, scholarlys, what did john sargent mean when he said it was a victory of great proportion. It turns out i think, think, that he was talking the same language of professor morris about members only union, Minority Union. He was talking the language of sbi you in their assistance to lowwage workers, fast food workers and here is what he meant. Maybe we will here from john. What we did then was the agreement through the Governors Office that the company would recognize the Steelworkers Union and any other organization that wanted to represent the people in the Steel Industry we went back to work with this governors agreement signed by various companies and Union Representatives in indiana. We had a Company Union our own Steelworkers Union. When we got back to work we work, we had company Union Representatives and steelworker Union Representatives, and we had no contract the company. But the enthusiasm of the people working in the mills made the strike into a victory of Great Proportions without a contract, without any agreement with the Company Without any regulations concerning hours of work, conditions of work, or wages a a tremendous surge should place. We talk about rank and File Movement the beginning of Union Organization was the best kind of rankandFile Movement you can think of. Of. Essentially workers in the mail who were so disgusted with the condition and ready for a change they took the union into there own hands now the statement, which i found very surprising without a contract we secured for ourselves agreements on working conditions and wages that we do not have today and that are better by far. For example, as a result of the enthusiasm of the people in the mail you had a series of strikes , walkouts, shutdowns, anything to secure for themselves what they decided they had to have. And what this statement challenged of course at least until very recently the only reasonable thing to do. You pass out leaflets, have meetings at sites away from the workplace in the end have authorization cards. Then you have an in our lb election and then if you are successful you enter into contract negotiations the approach of john and his colleagues was instead of building strength that way you build strength through small groups of people in the workplace taking initial action to when things right then and there and a very interesting example later in the book. An interview with a man named nick mayaguez mayaguez, who was the union representative, the Grievance Committee men. Mike and others can correct me, but i think it is fair to say that the open heart as long as you had that now Antiquated Technology for making steel was the heart of the process. You can shut that down and Everything Else to not have to stop. Similarly vicki another one of the people interviewed described the kill floor in the meatpacking house as the place where the most skilled, usually africanamerican workers were. If the kill floor went down, you did not need to take a vote on packaging because the place could not operate without that. And the reason that this seems to me so important today and the reason why we see groups of workers around the country picking up on it in different ways is that if you step back a bit and look at the way the cio went at things originally there are obvious problems the typical contract has a management clause which gives the company the owner, the boss a free hand in making all the Big Decisions like shutting down the no. The union cant file a failure to bargain charge about that because the contract contains a management prerogative clause not only that but the typical contract also contained a no strike clause on the one hand you give management Legal Authority recognized authority to make the Big Decisions and on the other hand you take away from workers there only real way to fight back. Now i want to make one thing clear. I hope it is the case the couple of groups of workers known to charlie you are trying this sort of thing are here with us tonight. The reason that it is important for me to say what im about to say is i have been through too Many Movement occasions when everyone in the room waste there time and energy combating one another when we should be outside winning only can. In this particular case what i think we now have is a general sense that there needs to be explored this Minority Unionism. The idea of building an organization through winning Small Victories but down the road in this general approach they diverge within the workplace we can look at this kind of organizing tactic and say if we wish what we are doing is trying with our minority forces to win some Small Victories maybe in these key parts of the production process like the open hearth and the steel mill or the kill floor in the meatpacking plant so that workers will say to themselves, if they can do it on their end of things, why cant we do it on hours. But if it is a tactical conception at the end of the road there probably is a a labor Board Election for an exclusive bargaining representative so that the union would say to people, hey, we are the guys that wonders and departments seven, the guys that one is for the midnight shift in department three. It it is a good way to build up a strong organization. But it is tactical and temporary. The other way to look at this kind of activity is hey, maybe that is a way of life. What is the name of the big electric plant out on the east side of things, charlie . And honorable. I think that must be it. It. The fellow who wrote his dissertation and book about that workplace said if i am not mistaken the way things were was the union and management agreed on something mail it to the wall so that everyone could see it. It was only in agreement about a particular issue, and then the next particular issue was resolved and added to the wall. Some people, people, i understand some amongst us tonight why not keep on doing that . And what i want i want to plead with everyone is this is new stuff. This is the 1st time in 75 years that many groups many established groups sei you ufc w taking it seriously this other way of building up strength in the workplace a couple a couple of years from now we may have enough experience that we can get in an argument about the strategic and practical, but i am pleading that people do not do that tonight or in general at this stage of the process. This is exploratory. We are just beginning. No. No one knows the answers for sure. Lets proceed as brothers and sisters, welcoming any gods of experience that come our way as things we can all learn from and in that spirit i understand, charlie, are your friends your . Would you like to say a few words . Because rather than you asking me questions, i would rather rather you here from people who are actually. [inaudible conversations] come on appear. [inaudible conversations] we wanted to here from two of the organizations. [applause] who wants to go 1st . Let me just Say Something a university in the shameful position they are taking the other thing the other colleague i think a wonderful moving thing recently as they approached 30 percent, 40 percent they run they won the election about two to one. Everyone kept their heads down. They were a majority not afraid anymore. The collective experience of power and suddenly this incredible feeling of freedom because they could speak, they had a voice. I am robert howard. A modern academic. National Advocacy Organization for contingent faculty. Only 24 percent of the people who are teaching our fulltime tenured faculty. Everyone else is contingent in one form or another. Our position was typical paid 2,500 per course. A maximum of four courses per year. No job security from one semester to the next. You effectively are reapplying for your own job every six months even though you have worked there for over 20 years. A list of indignities that goes on for miles. You can imagine when we started talking about unions people were interested. We thought about the conventional approach and by the spring of 2012 thanks in part to the work of our lead organizer on that campaign we got 70 of the workers to sign off reservation cards and won an election by a huge majority. But in the meantime the administration looked initially like they would say it is stipulated to the election which meant to say with the exception of the nlrb but a few weeks later they hired a fancy unionbusting lawyer out of memphis and filed legal papers that said it infringed upon religious liberty. In in some way their catholic identity could be sacrificed for destroyed by the presence of a boardcertified union. We, of course that we were happy to operate outside the authority of the nrl be just like the pittsburgh diocese. They did not want to do that either. That, to was an infringement upon their religious liberty. One of the founding documents and indispensable element of a just a just society. Literally not possible to have a just Society Without unions. In any event this put a hold on the legal process. At that. We were at a crossroads. We could stick with the parameters get the approval of the government or say why dont we just act like a union now. We are union when we damn well say so. [applause] [applause] so our approach had two parts. Act like a a union on campus and start pushing for improvement. Through a variety of tactics we were successful in significantly increasing our pay. A 50 percent raise is pretty good and showed that these Minority Union tactics work , especially if you are willing to be a little creative. The other part of our approach was to start organizing minorities. Already kind of a citywide network. Well, lets turn it into a form of power and create leverage because after all if you bargain a contract with one employer you can get an increase in pay, but at a certain time the harder it gets and the more force you need. But if you can raise it for the entire region you are shifting not individual employers but the entire market. That was this tragedy strategy. Many are not public yet but one more conventional we are in discussion with now and there are many more to follow. [applause] so i will i will draw a couple of general points and then shut up. First, i think it is a disadvantage a disadvantage not to have Legal Protections of a certain kind. I do not want to say as a general rule removing the process is an unqualified good. I like to have as many tools in the toolbox as i can. But, but of course, it is really designed in certain ways to suck out of the organizing experience rankandfile militancy and to guarantee it is a legal process. Rankandfile militants rankandfile militancy can push back against that. There is a certain sense in which the advance of that process can be advantageous. Parttime faculty are specifically listed as excluded from the definition of employees for the purpose of collective bargaining which means they can form a union and it is legal for the employer to voluntarily recognize a bargaining contract but you cant appeal to the board of prosecute or compelled the employer to bargain in good faith. That means that means the choice is very stark. Either you do nothing and get screwed or have a rankandfile militants union. The burning clarity of that communicates from the beginning of the process the nature of the situation which is not one where there is a middle ground in which the government will help you out. It is up to the bosses and we all stand together and fight or all lose. I see a lot more burning 30 and 30 and the Labor Movement then i think we have seen in a while. I think this is an optimistic moment one in which the Labor Movement is getting ready to become leaner and more powerful than we have seen in generations. [applause] [applause] i always i will keep it short. Local 57 was my 1st union in pittsburgh. A bunch of old white guys and very little rankandfile involvement. What has been so beautiful John Wilhelm Andy stern and others. He transformed the union. How you can see it is the organizers who come into town despite john mostly female and extremely good extremely dedicated articulate, intelligent and foster rankandfile. Okay. Okay. Can you guys here me . Like charlie said, i am a staff organizer. I used to work in a casino and then got involved in the union and came here. Lisa asked me to set her up because i grabbed i grabbed her at the last minute after a brutal shift at the casino and asked her to come work here at the last minute. I will do a little bit of intro before she tells her story. For me, one of the reasons i got involved in the unions in the 1st place, i grew up in West Virginia and when working in a casino it is like a bizarre look into the mentality of american capitalism. Like,. Like, it is right there with the volume cranked up to 11. And they do not contribute much at all to the communities they are in. You know, tax dollars that skimmed off and go to programs, which is nice but for the most part there is not much else unless we make them engines for good family sustaining jobs. We represent all the casinos in the region. There is a wide disparity between hospitality workers and the folks at the rivers have when they 1st opened up even though it is the largest facility of its type in the entire area. A bunch of workers got a hold of us. There had been two attempts to have an election for the facility workers four years ago and a Security Guard union that tried to have an election five years ago and both lost because the Company Opened up all of the guns, brought in every antiunion consultant they could. We got a good look into how the company would run and antiunion campaign. He is actually a personal friend with the woman who runs the Hyatt Corporation which are union has had an insanely long fight with. That relationship that relationship let us know how they would treat the negotiation. When these guys went public the idea has always been a car check campaign. You know the advantages the company does not know when you are coming, so they have a harder time fighting you. The disadvantage if your endgame is to just have a contract it takes a lot longer. In the meantime these guys are having a hard time at work. Lisa started taking action at work and the idea was to act for the union now. So many of your coworkers think all sorts of terrible things that have been tossed around by Mainstream Media or their antiunion uncle. Redefine the union as union as the group of folks that stands together and makes work better. They have won a lot of really cool actions to make that happen. All right. [applause] i apologize. I am not a great speaker in front of people. We have done several delegations since going public a little over a year and a half ago. Just as an example we got one server his job back. He was parttime before. We got him his job back he became fulltime back pay. The players club did a petition to have their seniority counselor 50 percent instead of 25 percent. In beverage, which is is my department we always thought they were doing shady stuff. So we want getting our credit card tips paid out in cash at night instead of relying upon the company may be giving them to us. Two weeks ago we got more than 400 people wearing yellow wristbands to fight against the attendance policy which pretty much set everyone up for failure. We want to change that and make it more fair. That is still pending. Hopefully we can win it. Doing marches, picketing one time and a half on holidays four days of sick days per year. [applause] [applause] hopefully we can give them something soon. [applause] one other thing they freely talk unions. They liberate the space in the workplace. They have asserted their right to be a presence in the workplace. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] they sign up for time in the employee dining room to talk about the union and figure out issues but they did want a policy. They went into the employee dining room on halloween for a solid just about 24 hours, i think. A giant sign that said tricks and treats. The tricks were all promises the company had made to employees over the years and the treats for all things that they were asking for. Committee folks were dressed up in halloween gear. I feel like it was fun and tacky and management have no idea what to do. Terrific. [applause] i dont know if you want to open up. What time do we have to 9 00 oclock. Let me make a couple of paternal comments. I agree the National Labor relations act should be parts of it are important and should be preserved. The simplistic way of thinking, even thinking even if you dont choose to pursue recognition under chapter nine section seven and eight, the right to engage in concerted activity is at least in my experience something i dont ever want to give up. Some nice things said about john well help looking at the student of mine in the al. Also before we for a couple of closing comments, a few people i would like to say a couple a couple of words. One of them is mike berger. , peer. He has done alice and myself the kindness we also have a representative of haymarket books which is publishing history from the bottom up i sat down. She said, i have not made sufficiently clear that most of what that book is about is how i started with this insight, affirmation of john sergeant, someone who had never been to college but had an understanding of his experience different from that of academics labor historians even radicals. Many Different Centers of activity and that i think is an unresolved problem that they all face. With that charlie and in addition to mark eric are you there from haymarket . Please buy a book to make this guys trip from chicago worthwhile. I would like to say a few words about haymarket. [applause] its been almost five years and i talked with alice and staughton about writing a book about them not about the antiwarriors are the Civil Rights Movement which has been documented well in the book admirable radicals are really about the years starting in 1976 when alice and staughton moved to youngstown and began really a rather remarkable a remarkable career being involved first of all in the efforts to oppose shut down the catastrophic shutdown of the mels in youngstown, the mahoney valley and later working on behalf of of prisoners especially members of the lucas bill 5, framed if you will by the state of ohio as the cause of the 1993 lucas bill prison uprising and wherever rankandfile workers in the area have needed help alice and staughton have been there. The title of the book, sidebyside alice and staughton in the ohio years is important i think for two reasons. One, because sidebyside to the life that alice and staughton have built together. They are husband and wife but they are also comrades. They struggled together. As alice once said its easier for us to Work Together than to work separately but i think sidebyside also reflects the idea which has guided all of their time in ohio and thats the idea of accompaniment that if you will remember the scene in the movie. After the union finally wins the representation of the election and a little mill town in North Carolina the organizers said byebye, we will see you soon. Well a company meant means a lifetime commitment on the part of the organizer, the radical. He doesnt he or she doesnt come in and organize them and say goodbye call us if you need anything. Hes part of the community. He lives and works with the people. He walks with them. It is sidebyside and before i turn the mic over to eric i want to say two things. One, the book is dedicated to a group of comrades who have shaped the ideas that alice and staughton have tried to live. John barbero and ed mann and Leslie Carmen and stan weir are wrote new year later revolt so many years ago and of course marsh labor man who wrote the famous pamphlet punching out among many other things and who helps me learn about the great jamaican marxist clr james. The book is really dedicated to these men who made a tremendous impact not only on youngstown in the area and are thinking about unions but also on alice and staughton. The book is available at Kent State University press and i hope that you will take an opportunity to buy it. Its not for sale here. I didnt necessarily want to compete with haymarket which is a fine selection of books and i would say about haymarket books that it really is one of the finest publishers of radical and labor civil rights black struggle books in the country today. I hope that you will have a chance to look at the books they have and understand in their catalog they have many more. Its an honor to be here. Eric. [applause] my name is eric. Thank you mark for those wonderful words. We had haymarket are extremely excited to publish doing history from the bottom up as well as the new edition of rankandfile. We really want to say thank you for allowing us to be part of this project because its so important. Our project is about publishing books. Our audience are activists out there in the highways and around the country shutting them down because of average of racism for police brutality. These are the people who are trying to give voice to the voiceless voiceless really and have the ideas of a previous generation of radicals that transfer those ideas so we can build on those experiences and really change the world. Like mark said check out the selection back there. We have doing history from the bottom up for 17 i encourage you if you have a credit card use that because we are running extremely low on cash change. We also have a fine selection of eclectic work of howard zinn and other labor history stuff. Thank you. [applause] host joining us now on booktv is former health and Human Services secretary louis sullivan, dr. Louis sullivan
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