Fist

In 1979 I quit my job with Duke Power and went to work for a specialty piping company as a quality assurance manager for it's Charlotte operation. Not long after I began work, The warehouse workers joined a union and immediately went on strike for better wages. Hoping to break the union, the company began rotating in younger salesmen from the various offices around the country to work in our warehouse. This was an ill conceived plan, as it was pretty costly to fly eight or ten guys in from Philadelphia, Houston, Pittsburgh, and even Anaheim, California for a week at a time, and then send them home and bring in another crew.

The warehouse workers on strike were a pretty tough bunch, and they had been pumped up by watching the movie "Fist" which had just come out. (Here is a wikipedia link about the movie for most of us who did not see it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.I.S.T.)  Fist, starring Sylvester Stallone, was a takeoff on the forming of the Teamsters Union, and it used considerable cinemagraphic license in depicting the violence of the union effort. To give you an idea of the character of the warehouse workers on strike (real life, not the movie), one of the strikers, Bubba, whose sole occupation before working at the warehouse was selling drugs, was married to a girl who I don't believe weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but was big enough to have stabbed to death Bubba's best friend at a party at their house. Another striker, Bobby was awaiting trial for raping a girl in downtown Charlotte on his way home from visiting his sick wife in the hospital. Of course, in Bobby's defense, he claimed that he only picked up a prostitute, and without paying her, left her naked on the side of Tryon Street. ( I'm not making this up!) There were several motorcycle gang types as well, including David who I will come back to later in this tale. They were on strike outside our gate for about 6 weeks, and each day we had to run the gauntlet to go to work. They discovered that the nails used to nail cardboard to pallets, with one inch square heads and one inch long spikes, did an excellent job of flatting tires as we went in. There were always catcalls and cursing, and I remember Bubba once jumped up on the fence and claimed that he could have me killed for fifty dollars. A threat that I did not take lightly considering his family ties. They shot into the building several times and once shot at a trucker carrying out a load of pipe. After about six weeks, the company offered, and the strikers accepted a contract which allowed everybody to kiss and make up.

A few months later  I took over as manager of the warehouse, and Bubba became my foreman. This worked out pretty well. Bubba was no longer in the union, he was a part of management, the workers respected him, he was fairly conscientious, and he was no longer a threat to my life. Things were going pretty smoothly, although I continued to keep a gun in my car. A few months later, Bubba comes into my office and tells me that David is about to get into a fight with a truck driver, there at the plant to pick up a load of pipe. I walked back to rear of the office, and there is David faced off with this driver, and as I am about to try to get things calmed down, (by this time we are all three in a little scrum, just a foot or so apart) the truck driver, who is about a head shorter than David, threatens to "kick David's ass". David whips a big Buck folding knife out of his pocket, puts the tip of it against the driver's breastbone, and says, "I'll kill you". Well, the driver and myself quickly backed up a step to assess David' bluster, and fortunately no blood was shed.

This episode put me in a bit of a quandary. David had to be disciplined, but valuing my life, I was admittedly reluctant to do what I knew I had to do, which was of course, to fire David. The next day, I called him into my office and did so. He left the building without any bloodshed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

My relief was short lived, because the warehouse workers took exception to my unfair firing of David over this one little incident, and went on strike to get David's job back. Having already experienced one strike by these guys, I decided to take a different tack on this one. At one point, I had considered hiring refugees from Vietnam who were quite desperate for work, and somewhat accustomed to gunfire as well, but I did not have to resort to that  tactic.  I got on the phone, and soon found a company willing to bring temporary workers (scabs) through the gates to operate the warehouse. This worked out very well. The strikers were seeing their jobs taken away, and they really weren't that fond of David anyway, so after about a week, they all came back to work.

After the fellows came back to work, I mounted a personal campaign to convince them that the union was doing nothing for them, and that they should decertify themselves from the union at the next opportunity. In reality, the national union they had joined, did not have much of a local presence, and truly was not doing much to support my workers at the warehouse. Sure enough, when the window to vote for decertification came open, they rejected the union as I wished. I was quite proud of my "achievement".

If you know me, or have read my blog posts, you might be surprised by my little union busting story, but here is a different take on the matter.

On the one hand, workers were underpaid, had little benefits, and no say in their work conditions. They took a tack that is often deplored by affected companies and by many nonunion citizens, especially in the south. Their heavy handed and sometimes violent behavior has become the stereotype of union behavior. They did, however, make some gains. Their pay was increased, benefits were extended, and they gained some say in the workplace, however miss placed that might have been. And, these gains carried over even after they left the union. Had they behaved differently, would those gains been realized?

The company, and by extension, myself, did not act exactly saintly in the matter. Fighting the union organizing effort cost untold thousands in lost business and expenses, and in the end, only to avoid what turned out to be modest increases and benefits. It, as nonunion companies always do, fought tooth and nail to avoid affording it's workers a fair shake in the workplace.

This is the only direct union experience I've ever had, so I'm no expert, but I did work for several nonunion companies. The owner of one company, upon my complaining to him that I could not keep good help because of the low wages, said to me: " Mike, I have no respect for a man that cannot support his family on $5.00/ hour". This was in 1986. We had 85 turnovers out of a workforce of twelve. Another employer, after one employee screwing or another, would simply explain, "It's just business". I hope to write a book about that experience one day, but I'll have to change some names.

Today I read that the governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, by executive order, blocked public employee unions from collecting fair share dues, and has called for Illinois to become a "right to work" state. If you don't know what fair share dues are, here's a  link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/bruce-rauner-unions_n_6648818.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular The Republican right would like to see trade unions completely destroyed in this country, and here's why.

Union membership in this country is down to 7% of the workforce, as opposed to the 35% share it enjoyed in the fifties. In my lifetime, the poorest areas of our country have always also been the least unionized. Even while these areas have be poorly represented by unions, they have benefited by union activity in other parts of the country. The forty hour week, child labor laws, minimum wages, sick leave, vacation, and employer provided health insurance, items which most of us enjoy, and take for granted, were negotiated for by unions, or were granted to forestall union influence. It is no coincidence that as union influence wanes, these benefits are being scaled back, and the inequality gap has exploded. It is also no coincidence that this country has been politically pushed to the right by both the waning influence of unions and by the people that would see us return to a state where the comfort of the rich is truly supported by an abundant supply of the poor. Here's a link to today's column by Robert Reich, (the smartest man in the world) who eloquently covers what I've just said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/back-to-the-19th-century_b_6648940.html

Let me make myself clear, I believe that every hourly worker in America should belong to a union, and to not belong to a union reduces a worker to servitude. I also believe that with rights come responsibility, and that union workers should bargain in good faith, and work diligently to produce a profit for their employers.

I hope you read my rant and pass it on. I know it will piss off a lot of my friends, but better pissed off than pissed on.