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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
E-0009, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Scott Hoyman was an organizer and bargainer for the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) beginning in the 1940s. In the 1950s, he began to organize textile mills in the South for TWUA before becoming the south regional director in the late 1960s. In this interview, he focuses on the TWUA's role in the Oneita Knitting Mills strike in Andrews and Lane, South Carolina, in 1973. He begins by describing the situation for workers in these two plants, detailing racial dynamics in each plant: the Andrews plant consisted primarily of white women, whereas the Lane plant mainly employed African American women. After explaining how the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) became a less predominant force for these textile workers, Hoyman focuses on how the TWUA worked to help the striking workers. Throughout the interview, Hoyman describes various strategies and tactics for the organization of textile workers in the South. He stresses the conditions and activities leading up to a strike, the role of collective bargaining, and the impact of such factors as money and participation of workers. In addition, he stresses the importance of strong leadership and staff in successfully advocating for workers' rights. Finally, Hoyman briefly addresses the history of the TWUA, describing interactions and tensions with similar organizations, such as the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) and the United Textile Workers (UTW). He concludes the interview by stressing the importance of having a strong unified force for organizing textile workers and by offering an assessment of the TWUA's work with major textile companies in the South at the time of the interview in the mid-1970s.
Textile Workers Union of America organizer and regional director Scott Hoyman discusses the Oneita Knitting Mill strike of 1973 in South Carolina. Throughout the interview, he focuses on strategies of the TWUA in organizing textile workers, bargaining and negotiating with textile companies, and tactics for successfully protecting workers' rights.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Portions of this tape are inaudible due to the poor technical quality of the tape.
… and got everybody singing. Loran Cook was quite a singer. She really put out some good music.
Well, she was probably, in terms of people that went from one place to another, she … we asked her to do a lot of that because she's very good a leading groups and very sincere and all that. She had a real feeling, you know, for what was involved. She's quite a person.
She did most of the travelling and most of the speaking in New York and Washington. She's very sincere.
Yeah. Now, the other young lady, I don't know if you've met her or not, Flossie …
Flossie Gibson?
Yeah.
The Gibsons are in Chicago.
Yeah, she is in Chicago, at Ed Collins office, our Mid-West director. And
she was a good song leader. Did you meet the young fellow
Evanson.
What?
We heard the name, but I don't …
Yeah. He was excellent.
My impression is that …
We were surprised that we didn't hear more about Flossie Gibson than we did. You know, when I talked talked to Mr. Collins, he mentioned her as being one of the persons that the union considered as one of its best organizers. Of course, the fact that she is in Chicago now …
I would say in any enterprise that springs up, there are people that have things that they are very good at and I think that Flossie wasn't active early … people turn up at different times, and she really became significant after the strike began. I'm sure that she voted for the union, I think that she was there during the campaign, but she wasn't on the negotiating committee, she became very important when we started singing union songs on the gate.
And during that period, Mrs.
Well, she was travelling around, but she was a picket captain. Which
meant that all during the strike, she would have been at the same place,
not necessarily at the same time. We had … I'm
sure that Ted Benton told you, he has a capacity to structure the
activities of the strike quite expertly and one of the keys to his
structure is the picket captain. They become very, very important
people. You know, the Bible talks about people who were leaders of ten
and those who were leaders of a hundred and then leaders of a thousand
and so on. Well, our picket captains were leaders, basically, of twenty
and they had a book and they would take attendance and it was very
important routine activity, because it enabled us to keep the picket
lines adequately manned over a long
We did get a tour of the plant.
Well, the outside of the plant was more interesting to us during the strike than the inside and there are an awful lot of gates:
Eleven or so?
Yeah, something like that. It's not like a plant with one big driveway and two people can picket. We had to have physically a fairly large number of people, to have a presence so to speak, on various sides of the plant.
We did drive around the plant and I remember two things that came to my mind. Well, no, we didn't drive all the way around it, can you drive all the way around it?
It's hard to, because it's bunched up against the railroad track.
… those gates … I sat in front and an old song came to mind … a song called "Twelve Gates to the City."
Oh yeah.
Which …
I guess that the twelfth gate would have to be the one in Lane. I assume that you went down to the other plant.
Unfortunately, we didn't get down there. There were meetings going on all the time and we couldn't manage it and…
Well, that's one of the unusual aspects of the strike, that we
had two physical locations simultaneously in organizing a strike. And
Lane, since it was twenty miles away, really had to be handled in a
parallel
There was …
Before the election?
Before the election. I guess that it would be before the election.
Well, we were, I didn't get involved until we got over that
hump. During the strike, we were concerned about whether the company
would be able to get significant black leadership in the community to
take a stand against the strike. Or encourage people to scab. The
community, the black leadership pretty well stayed, I think, on the
union side, although there were maybe a couple of deviations, but they
were more from people a long way away, you know, like twenty-five miles
from there there would be a little center and somebody would start
coming in over the picket lines and then he
It's interesting to compare the differences in the workers at
the Lane plant and the Andrews plant…
Well, of course, the reason for the difference was the age of the plants. The Andrews plant of Oneida, I think had been there since '54 or '55 possibly.
…
Could be.
…
And we had some people supporting the union who … and a couple of other people
…
Yeah. But Lane was a satellite development and I don't think that it had started until three or four years ago, maybe four or five, I don't know. So, this accounted for a lot of difference. When the original plant started, I don't think that they were hiring too many blacks. It was all white, or basically white. And the second plant, I think, the labor shortage had started to have some impact and Civil Rights Title Seven was there and they were hiring a lot more blacks in both plants. In fact, the composition of the Andrews plant changed racially to quite an extent between the time the ILG had the election and bargaining rights and strikes, and the time when we came down. There were a lot more white workers percentage wise in Andrews than by 1971.
We have been wondering a lot about ILG and what was left after they left
and exactly how it happened that they left. We have talked to several
people that were working there at the time, but still haven't
heard exactly …
Well, the fact that they got knocked out of the box and the fact that we haven't been, shouldn't be interpreted as a reflection on the ILG. They had a series of experiences, I guess, which happened to us in other locations and it just became very difficult. As I understand the history, they had a series ofone year contracts about bargaining rights, I think they finally represented the company in Utica, New York.
…
Yeah. And the Devereaux family came South with the move. That bargaining
rights in Andrews and they signed a series of contracts and they went
bad, they had fairly good fringes for that period of time and they had
check-off and they had arbitration. They had from the company the same
benefits, the practical issues that became issues of our strike. And for
whatever reason, at some point, the company decided to take them on.
I've heard that the issue might have been the extension of a
contract to a new plant in Collman, Alabama that the company put up. I
don't know. There is a reference on the issue of
subcontracting. And this kind of a plant, which is basically sewing,
subcontracting is a very big important issue in that type of operation.
They had a strike, it was sort of the reverse of ourse, I believe, in
terms of the season. I think that it started in the summer and ended in
the winter. The company tried to take them into federal court as
… over a so-called breach of contract. They were unable to do
that, they lost the case and the union filed some
In Don Smith's law firm up in Florida?
Yeah.
…
He represented the National Labor Relations Board.
Oh.
In action directed against the company and that kind of thing has
happened to us a few times in other locations. We had a circuit court
case back in '49 or '50 in regard to a plant in
Union Point and the Labor Board attorney that argued the case at this
circuit court was named and he later became a partner of the most famous
company firm, law firm in Florida…
So, they were out for several months …
That's my understanding, I'd hate for you to cite that, because I really don't know. E.C. Keherr is now their AFL-CIO civil rights committee representative in the area… and he has been very helpful to us, but I never had a chance to sit down with him and go over the thing blow by blow.
About this time that you are talking about, the company … did things that it said it would … one of the additional things … to give one year contracts… hadn't been there very long … just signed to them at one point … the dissipation of three year contracts …
…
…
Going back into the organizing?
…
Well, we had a series of very heartily contested campaigns in Wellman
Industries, which was 35 miles north north of Andrews and they were
directed by Harold McIver, who was the southern organizer and director
for the IUD and he is fairly active in the Stevens drive now, going full
blast in the Carolinas and he got involved in the Wellman campaign and
[Remainder of this side of the tape inaudible due to the poor
technical quality of the tape]
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… one of the negatives was that the company was represented by
this guy Bill Smith. And Smith is an old adversary of mine. I spent off
and on, about four years dealing with him for another plant.
It's
Could you talk about how a man like Smith can make a difference in negotiating?
Well, there's a formula in negotiations. For beating the union
or wearing the union out and it's very simple.
It's a proposal which usually says no to check-off or dues
and no on arbitration of grievances. And then when you push those
companies, they'll concede the right to strike. We refer to
this as the "Blakeney Formula." Whiteford Blakeney is
a lawyer in Charlotte who is the Stevens counsel. He has been since 1963
and in that period of time, the last ten years, I guess, I have bumped
into clients of his in negotiations for three or four companies. And the
formula is always the same. Well, Smith imitates that formula to a
greater or lesser extent, in both Garco and Oneida, he would not agree
to the check-off and in both cases, he did agree to arbitration. And he
offered us in both cases what I would call a highly restrictive
contract, in terms of workers rights in the plant. Such as, senority
rights and he likes
Once you won the election, you mean.
Yeah. The first big decision from our point of view is do we go after
them. The second is what do we do when we get them and we engage in
bargaining for about a year, less than a year. Before… about
six or eight months before we made a decision that if we could, we would
ask the people to strike. And we then staff the plant out real good. One
or two people and then another one or two staff people. And Washington,
Hope and Benton were the three people in there for some long period of
time. And
The committee of workers, you mean?
Yeah. The negotiating committee. And we had an excellent committee. They were tough. Dorothy Gleason, who comes from the ILG, and …
Chick Cook?
Yeah, the cutter, Richard Cook, they are tough. And black people on the committee, Loran Pope, I would rate her as a very important person. They hadn't had the same experience with the ILG, but they knew what they wanted. So, that was how we made that decision. The major decision for an international union to make is to embark on a strike of this kind in this part of the country.
What kind of a financial burden did you assume for that strike?
Well, we have a strike fund. The strike fund provides in what are called organizing strikes, that's a little misnomer, because we had the plant, we had the bargaining rights, but "organizing strike" in this sense doesn't mean a recognition strike. We've got one of those going on right now, Crossville, Tennessee. Benton, I'm sure, mentioned that.
We've been invited to go over there and …
Yeah, that's quite a thing. But this is really a first
contract strike, that's what I call it. It's
different than other kinds of strikes a union supports, because those
strikes are from people who pay union dues. Now, we've had
four or five of those kinds of strikes this year in my region. But they
would be people who had an investment in the union, if we want to look
at things book-keeping wise, and therefore are getting some of that
Outlaw strike.
Yeah. Sure, and that was with the check-off. The contract was signed in July and we didn't want to ask anybody to pay dues after a six month strike until they had a few paychecks under their belt so that they knew what money was like.
Yeah.
So, we turned in the check-off cards in August and I guess that they have by now have had some deductions from their paychecks. The company takes a while to get those things started.
Were the election of union officers before or after the strike?
After. We don't usually set up a … we ran the strike in terms of union structure with a committee and it was, as I said, an exceedingly good committee. And picket captains. We had the negotiating committee, which was large. I guess that it went ten or twelve people, because we were representing two plants, and then we have picket captains in both locations. And it turned out to be a good structure. And then we had a commissary committee. Well, you've probably heard about these committees. At any rate, going back to the decisions… financial liability would be considerable.
How much did you have to assume for the whole …
I would think between $300,000 and $400,000. This is only in terms of direct financial assistance. I'm not talking about salaries, I'm not talking about staff salaries, I'm not talking about time. This was a major effort by the Textile Workers Union.
This three or four hundred thousand dollars, was that out of the strike fund that you had already, or does that include some of the contributions from other locals?
No, this is international union treasury.
So, there must have been considerable expense beyond that.
There was a lot of money given by different local unions. There was a lot of money given by other international unions and locals. Well, there were substantial amounts. And then we have money given by individuals. But the boycott activities, which accompanied the strike, at this point, you are getting beyond decisions that I would make. These would be decisions by the international union, basically by the general president, Sol Stetin. And it's a very interesting thing, as a new president of the union, he had only been in office since June of '72, he adopted a very aggressive policy in pursuing this target, once we had made the decision on a leader. That we were going to take them on. And it fortunately paid off, we won. The international union put in more energy in pursuing the boycott activity than in any previous strike that I have had any connection with… back to probably Henderson, North Carolina in 1958 to '60.
I remember that one well.
So …
Let me just ask you … this was pretty well a cheif priority for this 1972-73, it was '71 really, campaign, to spend around $600,000 for a strike at a plant of this size. Were there any other efforts of that strength, you know, that the international could not.
Not during that period, no. Particularly within a region. We go from
North Carolina … at that time we went from North Carolina to
That also must be a tough decision.
Yeah, it is, because you are dealing with people. You are asking one group, you know, to wait. And that's a hell of a thing to suggest to people. You don't know what the effect of delaying is. Delaying is almost always helpful to the company, not the union. So, it is important.
We were talking about other kinds of decisions that you would make.
Oh, scads. One of the interesting things of operating a union or taking part in a union is the fact that a union depends more, I would think that it depends more on the character of its representatives than almost any other organization that I can think of. And if you want to accomplish certain results, you think very hard about who is going to be what. Some people are good for some things and some are good for others. And one of the key decisions in this is staffing … and I don't want this to be interpreted as critical of other people involved in the situation, but there are two people who are very, very important during the strike itself. The first one is Benton and the second one was Bush. And Bush… Benton had run two previous strikes. One of then was in Magnet Mills in Clinton, Tennessee and that strike lasted for twenty-four months. And after six months or so, the company closed down the mill. It was a buy by the name of Burd from New York City.
B-U-R-R?
B-U-R-D. A very unusual person. And it was a small plant, well, it
…
No, it was …
Oh, I see …
They then had the traditional weapon and I must say that they use it. At any rate, Benton went through the Kayser-Roth strike in Dayton, Tennessee. That was a very difficult strike, it was entirely different from the Clinton strike, and one of the aftermaths of that strike was that the union was sued and there is now circuit court judgement against us on appeal to the Supreme Court for damages in excess of a million dollars. So, it was a fairly big decision to pick someone from that situation, he was in charge of that strike, and assign him to Oneida. And it's an interesting thing. In the Oneida situation, the things that we were sued for in Dayton did not happen. In fact, the company didn't even get an injunction against us. And in Dayton, we had injunctions coming out our ears and all kinds of arrests and everything else. And so, Benton deserves a lot of credit for reflecting the difference that we were trying, as he felt that we had to have in the conduct of that strike. That was another important decision. The style of strike. And I'm not saying that this was good or bad. It was just the only kind we could have.
Let me just say that as we talked to people down there, the style of
strike that you picked seemed particularly appropriate. It's
very good
They talk about that in terms of the steel strike in Georgetown the week before that, as the sherrif and then that being one of the effects of it.
Yeah, when you see that film, I understand you can …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
… so, staffing was important, and Benton and Bush. Benton aroused a lot of antagonism. That's probably a strong word. There was a lot of internal criticism.
Within the union?
Within a group of the strikers, within the committee, among the folks.
And Bush had been in two other short strikes in the last two years.
He's originally from the steelworkers union out of
Manchester, Tennessee and he's a relatively young guy,
he's only 37 or 38 and we wanted someone who would develop
into a good strike man and Bush got chosen. So, he sort of served an
apprenticeship in Andrews. He's in charge of the strike at
We heard a number of things about him.
Yeah. Crying towel and a piece of cheese for the "rats", you know all the symbolism that it takes to keep things hopping. He's pretty good at that.
Could I just ask about that decision?
Sure.
I was very impressed with how Benton talked about when the strike was going on, but what other ways could he have run the strike? What other decisions could have been made?
Well, it's exactly like any kind of a contest. You are only
going to have so many dollars coming in. That's number one.
Number two, really number one, you've only got so many
strikers. This is the scarcest resource
And we have people like that in any group. There are people like that on
the company side, there are people like that among the scabs. And so,
the question is what to do about it and what kind of policies you
advocate and what you don't and what you prohibit and what
you don't talk about or say anything about and so there are
all kinds of levels. And most things that happen, you don't
know ahead of time. You hear a vague report, and maybe something
happened, you know. So, this is a big problem and in long strikes, in
1973 in a state that has very little labor organization and is
unfriendly to organized labor, it is a very difficult thing to allow
violence to develop even without a policy of, any policy of promoting
it, but to allow it to develop and still avoid being penalized possibly
in many different ways. So, that was another sequence, and Benton was
responsible for carrying out that kind of policy and Bush and any staff
rep in there, Washington, Pope and then the committee. You've
got to depend on the committee people to agree. You've got to
convince them of what strategy you are going to follow and
you've got to make it believable and you hope that they will
agree and will wholeheartedly cooperate. If they
Does the tactics, the decision that you have gone through …
they worked at Oneida. I'm sure that it is a situation kind
of thing. Do you think that it would work as you look toward other big
campaigns, the Stevens campaign or whatever the … you take
these things a little bit different. That's one thing
I'm wondering, if that is a lesson that you have learned now,
it works successfully and …
Well, I am frankly not enthusiastic about the tactical effect of violence. I don't personally believe in it and regardless of my personal beliefs, I don't see it as an appropriate union policy. I was telling the people over at Crossville, I guess it was, the other Saturday night it was. "If you get drunk on a Saturday night and you fight and you go up before the judge, if anything happens, it's like $25 you know. It's not expensive. But if that was a picket line and you were a union guy, you are not talking about $25, you are talking about how many years you are going to go up and how many thousands of dollars the union is going to be sued for. And so, there are double standards and it is ver difficult for us to beat them and to survive. So, I would suppose that we would explore that and I differe with some. There are a lot of other union people, I suppose that you might call me old school, possibly would agree with that. And possibly some of the new left people might not agree with that. So, I don't know.
Now that you have won the strike at Oneida, what do you see that strike doing for the rest of the region in terms of organizing?
Well, the significance of the Oneida strike, and this is-one of the
reasons why the international backed it, was that it is in the middle of
a cluster of companies. Wellman is one. Little Georgetown Textile with
only seventy people is another. We are in bargaining there. It is on
I have two questions: Why would grape dealer be making underwear, and
number two, how can a company like Devereaux make money, take the
'71 year …
Well, I'm not an expert. But, they are making money now
because everybody is under a high level employment. There is quite a bit
of available buying power. The textile industries are a good example.
The unemployment levels in North and South Carolina are 1½,
2½ for example. In Charlotte, in some of these textile towns,
the unemployment level gets down to 1.3. It gets down as low as it can
go and there is a terrific labor shortage. And this is why those
companies are moving down into the black coastal plain of North and
South Carolina, because there is still those counties. That county down
there had very bad poverty. But all those people are being sucked up by
…
Well, I'm speculating. Because nobody on our side of the table
usually knows what happens, just like they don't know exactly
how we make decisions. And the people who say that they have all the
answers is usually a committee guy, or somebody in the plant who will
tell you that, "we know exactly what happened." Well,
that's what they think happened. Sometimes, they are
absolutely right, sometimes it's just in their minds. So,
I'm talking about what I would guess, based on little scraps
of information of one kind or another. I think that they company was led
to believe by the lawyer and by the production manager, the top people
in the company were led to believe that first, people
wouldn't come out. And secondly, when the people did come
out, they were led to believe wouldn't stay out. And if
either of those things had been true, the company's strategy
would have been correct, but they were wrong. And then, the company may
have thought, I think that Smith probably thought this, … in
the Garco situation, the plant management was very paternalistic and the
wages and benefits were very high. They are dealing in an entirely
different market and product, including defense contracts and stuff for
the Navy in Charleston and asbestos is a high price product, you know.
And it has a sharp impact on people's life expectancy and for
a lot of different reasons, the wage scale there was good, and those
people never struck. There was a ten day strike that I didn't
have anything to do with. And that was the pattern that Smith was used
to in
…
Yes, we've got a tape account, half an hour.
Yeah. I heard that.
You heard that thing?
…
Yeah, a captive audience so to speak. What we call a captive audience, the climax of a company's anti-union election campaign.
His perception of what was possible there seemed as screwed as it
possibly could be and as talked …
So, at any rate I think …
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
The reason that I asked that question is that we often run up against the
name "Parsons", a banker there in town that was on the
board of directors, so it seems to be at least the Jamestown plant and
the Andrews plant and I'm not sure what other plants and the
way that his bank took to
Well, I heard about him. We tried to talk to him. I think that some of
the staff people did maybe, without any … or at least they
sent
Yeah, I've got it …
… R. Fusco.
Is the family around in South Carolina?
There may be, I don't know. My impression was that he came
from New York and I think that his wife is a South Carolinian. He ran
for the
What about Erntz (
Urtz. U-R-T-Z. Frank Urtz. He's a very unusual person and I don't like to make a lot of derogatory statements about people. He would… he didn't like negotiations. It was very uncomfortable for him to be in that position and he was supposed to be in all the meetings. I think that he kept bringing the excuses up to the company as to why he shouldn't have to be there, particularly after the strike begin and he became the subject, sort of the main target of the union. And he would sit over, maybe he would face away from the committee and maybe everybody else on the company side would be up here and he would be maybe back. Or after a while, when the strike got to be two months old or more, it was very difficult to get him to say anything. It was obvious that he was uncomfortable and maybe he then figured that his original strategy was not working the way he hoped it would in terms of people not striking.
How important was the animosity against him personally in bringing people
out on the strike? And another question about Mr. Urntz, several people
mentioned that they thought that the company had kept Urtz in that
Well, I don't underestimate Mr. Urtz. I think that he is an highly intelligent man. He was very brusque. You know, there is a style of bosses in industries related to the garment industry which is very tough. And quick and hard and unpolished. And Urtz could be all of those things if he wanted to. On the other hand, you know, he was a smart man and some of his tactis in the campaign were not stupid tactics, you know. He was not an easy person to beat. He used these things that we may think are silly, like the analogy of the family, "this was all family." Well, that happens to be a pretty doggone effective tactic. And the strikers wouldn't admit and the union people wouldn't admit to being members of the family, but it worked for an awful lot of people for quite a long while, because you know, particularly, southern whites transfer family concepts to owners and managers and you can talk about the "code of the hills." Well, there's a code of personal relationships and responsibilities between, in the old style textile communities, between a worker and a man that lives in the white house on the hill and runs the plant. And so, the family analogy is sort of an attempt to project that kind of an image. The father may spank you, but he will also feed you and direct you in what to do, but he will also look after you. I guess the reaction to Urtz in retrospect, I'm sure, must be very big and the people are talking.
Oh, it certainly is.
But it wasn't all that clear at the beginning. There were a lot of people who disliked him.
He's been made an object of ridicule and …
Yeah.
And people say that he is sort of hiding himself at the mill now and afraid to be seen, partly because he has been demoted and partly because he is too proud. But they apparently sort of enjoy looking at him and making him feel uncomfortable.
That's too bad. Well, there was a report at the end of the strike that … the company was going to … after a period of time, you know, companies don't like to yield obvious changes. They like to do it by stages. And there was a report that he was sort of going to become a trouble shooter, or go on the road as a technical consultant to sales or whatever, be phased out of the Andrews scene. I don't know whether that will come true or not.
Talking about tactics and results, two things. One is that they did move over to Georgetown. Seemingly a stupid thing to do about six years ago when they moved, out of the Andrews community, because that community is so small. If he had stayed there, at one point he would have been much greater than he is now. But you talked about tactics that he was able to use successfully, or that companies are able to use successfully. What were some of those that had some effect?
Well, the company absorbed, I think, most of the ILGWU leadership.
Tisdale, a little British woman who is the personnel officer for the
company now, was an ILG member. The former president of the local, the
woman … I don't know whether you bumped into her
or not … she was the number one person on the ILGWU
organizing campaign. The ILG organizers gave her the cards and she said,
"When we need you, we'll send for you." And
she signed up the whole plant. That woman was on the company side in our
campaign. Now, the interesting thing is that a lot of companies would
have fired or gotten rid of every strong ILG leader
What exactly did ILG's existence there prove?
I'm not entirely clear about that, I don't know. It
was current enough so that when we did make a decision to go in, there
wasn't any formal cut-off of their bargaining. Now, one way
to stop bargaining is to let it die, you know, inactivity and if you
don't exercise your bargaining rights, you don't
keep them. So, one thing we did, when the people said that they wanted
to organize, we sent word to the ILG and they sent up a staff rep and we
had a staff rep. Roper. This was when Roper was still in organizing and
we met, they met with the people and they let the staff people know
which union they would like to come back in and help them. The ILG said
that "if they would like you folks to help them, fine. More
power to you." …
…
One of the things that we are not very clear on is when this all began.
You talked about the staff people coming down and …
Right.
But now when it came to a decision of this magnitude, who was going
Anybody who would come. Anybody that had enough guts to show up.
Who all showed up at first?
I don't know. As I said, I think that R.L. was the man who was present at that meeting and I believe Roper and I think that he at that point was working for Harold McIver as an organizer and he didn't stay there through the election. It was Washington … you didn't get a chance to talk with him?
Well, we're going to.
Are you going over there?
We hope so.
Well, o.k., there was him and …
…
Oh, you're going to Crossville, well, that's great.
…
Well, Washington was a black guy out of Mills and he's sort of
an old style cotton mill type when he started, but he is pretty
sophisticated. He's become more polished and he's
developing, and Pope I think, were the two guys and really interested in
the organizing. They would be worth talking to because they have stayed,
Washington stayed in that area for three years before the strike
started. I'm not counting that time. He went through a couple
of Wellman campaigns and this campaign and I think that he was also on
Santee, So, these two guys were part of four winning elections in a row.
For the Textile Workers Union. That was a string of wins down there
largely based on blacks, black but yes votes and that is a pretty
fantastic string. Now, unfortunately, none of these outfits
In talking about those places where they had voted for the union but you still had difficulty in negotiating with the company. You said that there are some types of things that you can do to keep the union there and once you are there you're not going to go away. What sort of things can you do when you don't have the financial support to strike but you want to keep your presence?
Well, one thing you do, well, obviously, where you are in this kind of
situation, you've got to set up good communications with the
people. Now, that's a very hard thing for a union. You never
have enough staff to go around, so you are always wanting to take
someone from one place and start something else. It depends on what your
value system is. Now, usually you measure production by election wins
and that conflicts with what we are talking about. Because these are
really finishing up things, really the best definition of organizing is
the number of new dues payers under contract in the plant. The whole
process that Andrews has now gone through. O.K., but you have got to
establish credibility with people and you've got to keep it.
You never cut corners, status quo situations and when you get into a real
long pull, it's a little different. You've got to
be able to last with all kinds of disappointments or delays. So,
that's one thing and you've got to gear people to
that.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
… so, if you tell them what's going to happen and you say, "Well, this isn't good," or "Here's what we would like to do, but we didn't get that much." Well, then they'll start standing up. People can face a lot of adversity if you treat them as adults. Now, there are tactics that you use to prevent the company from having an election, for example. You've got the presumption of bargaining rights for a year. That's what you get with certification. Now, when the year is up, the company has a shot at you, if they want it. If you've got them involved in unfair labor practices, you can't have an election (even) if you want one where you have charges pending against the company. The Board won't hold an election without "laboratory conditions." Well, if you are …
That means that you are pretty sure that you will win, if you withold an election.
Well, once you win the election, there's no advantage to you, usually, in having another one. It's just like having won a hundred dollars, why put it back on the line where you might lose it. Winning a second time doesn't help you any. It just gives you what you had when you won the first time. So, you want to preserve your bargaining rights. You use unfair labor practices. That's a way of doing that. You get into a strike, one of the key events of the Oneida strike, we had just filed charges against them. The first charges we filed in July about bargaining, not about the election. The frist charges, negotiations began in January and February of '72. The first charge was filed in July. We got a decision on those charges and a hearing in October and they were still pending when the strike began. We ultimately won those, but this did not make the strike, which began on January 15, 1973, a "unfair labor practice