[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

WILLIAM FINGER:

Jim, I guess the way to start might be for you to tell me how you got interested in the labor movement in the first place. Was that from your parents or your location?

JIM PIERCE:

My father was a union member, a member of the Carpenters Union active when I was young in helping saw mill workers organize in addition to others. Probably one of the very early and moved by the Carpenters Union to do any industrial type organization especially on an interracial basis. So, my background in trade union movement goes back to the time when I was a child and my father was a union member and a business agent for …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did he work for the Carpenters Union?

JIM PIERCE:

Well kind of on a local … he was a local business agent part of the time and sometimes … well

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President or Secretary of a local union. He worked on a job but he held office in the Carpenters Union.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And that was in the Craft Union, the AFL Union?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Where was that?

JIM PIERCE:

This was in Ponca City, Oklahoma.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I didn't know there were unions in Ponca City, Oklahoma. How many were there?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh, when I was just … it was during the Depression, a tornado came through Ponca City and blew the roofs off the houses. It was the Carpenters Union that put the roofs back on. They were very strong. The Union in Ponca City in the middle thirties was stronger really than the Craft Union in Charlotte today because they built the homes, they built the garages, they built the additions. Now …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was it an all union town?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh, it was very well organized.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Industrially as well?

JIM PIERCE:

Well there were only two industries, two refineries. One was Conoco and it had the Oil Workers Union, and the other was City Service and it had an independent company union. So it was a union town. But Ponca City was kind of right in the middle of the old populists area, so you have got a lot of unions and you've got a lot of Norman Thomas, and you've got a lot of …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Now, you got that growing up, or you just kind of became aware of that later?

JIM PIERCE:

No, no, no. This was my life. This was … dad was, as I said AF of L … I remember when the CIO was first formed and the … oh, preachers and people like that were going through the country calling the CIO a communist organization and they had their tent meetings, and they showed films of bodies laying all over the place, and the hammers and the cycles, you know, and everything. Dad would attend those meetings because he was strongly AF of L, and we went … ahh, he took us so we could see these kind of things.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was this 1936 - 1937?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So how old were you then?

JIM PIERCE:

Well, I was born in 1925. Ten, eleven, twelve.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Your mother was also an interesting part of your background?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yes, mother was I guess half Cherokee. Her ancestors escaped from the trail of tears in Missouri, as they were marching the Cherokees over from North Carolina, and they settled in the Ozark section of Missouri and my father married her in Missouri and they moved to Oklahoma. So we actually … their background was Missouri. I was born there on the Osage Reservation … what was then the Osage Reservation, now is Osage County, Oklahoma.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Your father moved over to the Reservation?

JIM PIERCE:

He moved to Oklahoma and then he … the Osage Reservation was on one side of the Arkansas River and Ponca City was right across the rives in what they call Kay County, and so we lived part of the time in

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Ponca City and part of the time across the river on the Reservation. Part of that was due to the fact that, you know, in Oklahoma in those days we were half breeds, and it was just a little bit more comfortable living across the river on a Reservation than it was living in Ponca City.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How was … was your mother aware of a particular kind of repression as an Indian?

JIM PIERCE:

I don't really know. She died when I was about ten years old. I really don't know that much about that. I remember her as beautiful brown skinned, with long hair braided … I remember all of the Indian remedies for diseases … skunk oil she relied heavily on, and the herbs and things she got from her Indian background. She was very much an Indian and proud of it and I am too.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And that stayed with you?

JIM PIERCE:

For a long time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you went to CIO meetings, what would your father …

JIM PIERCE:

No, these were not CIO meetings, these were anti-CIO meetings, conducted by the people who were fighting CIO. In that area you had the populists movement, but you also had a very traditionalist fundamentalist type of church movement, and these preachers at their tent meetings would … maybe this is why I don't like preachers too well … would take advantage of the fundamentalists background, the religious background of the people to preach against CIO, and they had some of the most horrible

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movies and films that you have ever seen. Dad would take us to those meetings because as an AF of L … a very active AF of L member, he was opposed to the CIO.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Would they be in union halls or churches?

JIM PIERCE:

Usually in tents. The ones I remember were in tents.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was it at a Revival meeting?

JIM PIERCE:

Revival type religious meeting with all of the anti CIO, oh hell, it was no different from what happened in Gastonia in the twenties and things like that. Industry uses religion to beat unions period. It still does, it did then, and will always do it if it can.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So the Carpenters and the other Craft Unions … were they already making some alliances with business at that time? I mean you were so young that …

JIM PIERCE:

I don't think they were alliances. It was just that the CIO posed a treat to the AF of L. the CIO posed a threat to the industry. Industry was using the preachers to defeat the CIO, and the AF of L was glad to see it happen, I guess.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Can you remember the first time you didn't feel anti-CIO yourself?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah. While I was in the Navy … I don't remember a lot about this … the miners went on strike, and they were CIO and everybody was raising hell about the miners striking during the war, and I thought they were

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pretty gutsy people, and I think that brief exposure to John L. Lewis and the things that he believed in through the newspapers and over the radio made me feel pretty good about the CIO. But I think probably even prior to that, in Ponca City the workers at one refinery went into the Oil Workers Union which was a CIO Union and they just looked stronger and happier and they were more militant. This was when I was a kid.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were in high school in Ponca City?

JIM PIERCE:

Right. I was in high school, but it wasn't in Ponca City. I was living about two or three miles from Ponca City over in Osage County, and because there were so many Indians they didn't bus us to Ponca City two or three miles away, they bussed us to a little country town about 25 or 30 miles away. So I was actually in high school in a little town called Burbank. It was only in my senior year that they decided to start bussing from our section into Ponca City.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you went to school with Indian kids … you were an Indian kid?

JIM PIERCE:

Of course. Seventy or eighty percent of the … my classmates were Indians, or at least part Indian

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was it a segregated school system?

JIM PIERCE:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

A separate school system for the Reservation?

JIM PIERCE:

No, no. There were whites.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you felt like one of the Indians more than white?

JIM PIERCE:

Of course I wanted to be one of them. Yeah, that's right. You know it only takes a few times for some white to tell you to get out of the way half breed, before you decide that you would rather be a half breed. You know.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was your father's reaction to that?

JIM PIERCE:

I don't know. You know, at that point, it was during the Depression, he had lost his job, there was no construction work. He tried to get a job in the refinery and had one for a little while and apparently because of his union background they tossed him out, and he was cutting wood, you know, out in the forest for a living and so you saw him very very little. I mean during the summer you would take a sandwich down to him or something like that, but … I didn't know my father in those early days. I didn't see him.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you have a lot of brothers and sisters?

JIM PIERCE:

Just two brothers younger than I. One only a couple of years younger and one was born when my mother died.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When you left high school, did you go straight to the Navy?

JIM PIERCE:

No I wasn't old enough. I graduated at 16 from high school, and I traveled. I worked on construction, … well the first job I had was selling magazines for about a month or two until I found out that it was a gip, and the people weren't getting the magazines, so I went on construction and followed construction crews as an apprentice carpenter, until I became 17, and then when I

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became 17, I enlisted.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That was up to the war years then?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right. That was in '42.

WILLIAM FINGER:

In '42. Still without much feeling about unions strongly except about the CIO. I mean you had the AFL background …

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you were mostly just a young man out to see the world? Is that the way you did …

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah. I wanted to know what was going on, and I thought traveling would do it, and in those few months between the time I graduated from high school and the time I went into the Navy, oh I was in Texas, then I went to Louisiana and from Louisiana to Iowa, from Iowa to Montana, from Montana to Nebraska, from Nebraska to California, from California to Oregon and then back to Oklahoma a time or two in between traveling, working to see what the world was like.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What else happened to you in the Navy that's important in terms of how it shaped your direction … you read about the miners, you read about John Lewis.

JIM PIERCE:

What really happened to me in the Navy was … I don't know, the Navy really did change me. I went overseas. I was in a bomber group in the Navy, mostly a reconnaissance type group, but the idea of killing, the idea of war, of working people in Germany and United States and England and France and Japan killing one another for the benefit of their governments or industry, which at that point, I was beginning to think

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that the whole war was brought on by some kind of conspiracy between industry to make money, and I am not so sure I wasn't right. My whole outlook … I saw suffering, I saw people of other races, I saw a lot of things I didn't like and I guess …

WILLIAM FINGER:

What did you read to make you think there might be a conspiracy?

JIM PIERCE:

I am not sure that I read anything. I don't really remember. In the Navy you talk to a lot of people from different areas, you … I traveled a lot, I traveled all over the world while I was in the Navy. For a long time I was in the naval air transport service, and you never knew; You know, you may be in Africa today, and South America tomorrow and Australia the next day … when you weren't flying … I got out of the war part … I mean the fighting part pretty quick. I didn't like it and I don't think they liked me in it, and they put me in naval air transport … I had gone through a radar, super secret radar counter measure school, and in the process of getting clearance or getting me cleared for that, they did a study back, they did an investigation back home and found that when I was a senior in high school and on the debating team, … I think the question was "resolve that communism in theory is better than democracy in practice," and I probably did more reading getting ready for that debate than I did all the rest of the time put together, but I won the debate.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And the Navy found that out?

JIM PIERCE:

The Navy found that out and during the course

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of clearing me for Radar Countermeasures School, and I liked to have not got cleared, but I did. I went on through the school, but instead of going back overseas, or something like that, they put me into training other people on radar countermeasures, then a short time later in Naval Transport, a non-combatant activity. So, you know, there is two things to do, you loaded your plane and took it some place and then when you got there you headed for the nearest bar, and talked to whoever was on the next stook you know. Well, you meet a lot of people that way, and when you are doing it all over the world, you meet a lot of interesting people.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you kind of got some kind of world view, is that what you are saying?

JIM PIERCE:

Maybe it was bar view, [laughter] at that point. Yeah, no seriously, you saw a lot of things that made you think, made you ask questions. You wondered why when you landed … well, we took a sea plane one time down to a place in the center of Africa called Lake Chad, guns ammunition to a bunch of natives it was picked up by obviously local people that were going to be guerillas in fighting the Germans and you wondered why in the world those people were involved in the war anyway, you know, because they were starving, hungry and they should have been out raising crops and feeding their family. Instead, somebody had conned them into a war that was of no real benefit to them either way. You wonder about things like that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What did that make you do when you left? When you got out of the Navy, did you go back to Ponca City?

JIM PIERCE:

Briefly. I was quite restless. I had left

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high school with a scholarship to Tulsa University. I went back and tried to pick it up, but I just couldn't go to college. I was restless, I don't really know why, you know, if I could look back and do it over, I might have changed. I had a good technical training in electronics while I was in the Navy, so I went to work for Western Electric as an installer because they were hiring a lot of young guys like myself and it was travel again, and people my age, in the skill that I knew …

WILLIAM FINGER:

In Ponca City you went to work for Western Electric?

JIM PIERCE:

Actually I went to work for them in Tulsa. I went from Ponca City to Tulsa, went to the University for a little while, decided that I couldn't go the route, and joined Western Electric there. They shortly, within a few months, transferred to Texas, to Fort Worth and the rest of my life really is tied to Texas more than it is Oklahoma.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You installed what

JIM PIERCE:

It was central office equipment. We worked on the first L-Carrier, the first Coaxiae Cable that went across the country, that kind of long distance, highly technical equipment that was being installed right after the war.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you a member of a union then?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, a very interesting little company union that had dues of $.50 a month and the office was in the telephone building. A very cozy arrangement called the National Federation of Telephone Workers. It

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was set up by the company after passage of the Wagner Act to keep the AFL or CIO from organizing their workers. So the first union I belonged to after the Navy was a little company union that …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Most of the telephone operators themselves were members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right. Nearly all of the telephone workers in the country belong to those little unions.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was your perspective on that little Federation at the time? Were you just making it a part of your job, …

JIM PIERCE:

Well, I joined the union because I had always been taught that any union is better than no union, but it wasn't much of a union.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So something happened from Western Electric in that it had a telephone installer and a company union to organize the committee of the CIO.

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, what happened was the union wasn't servicing the needs of the members and the people became more and more militant within this company union, and finally in 1947 against the advice of the leaders of the organization, we went on strike, and we stayed on strike for six or seven weeks, and won it, and won it in spite of the union in many cases.

WILLIAM FINGER:

This was a wage agreement strike within that union, this wasn't an organizing drive by CWA or something like that?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh no, no. CWA had not been formed at that

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point. This was actually a contract termination but a determination on the part of the people to get more than what the union would get for them. So it was actually a great big juicy wildcat strike, that is what it amounted to.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you won it?

JIM PIERCE:

And we won it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What happened …

JIM PIERCE:

Won it without strike being a. Won it without any real leadership because we had the greatest people in the world.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you assume leadership in that strike yourself?

JIM PIERCE:

Not really. I was active, but not really leadership. The day before the strike I got married, thought the strike would last two or three days and I could go on a honeymoon, and we did. Pat and I went to Carlsbad Caverns we took a bus, we didn't have a car, we took a bus to Carlsbad Caverns and spent two days down there and spent all the money we had and came back expecting the strike to be over, and found that it was going to last another five or six weeks without us having … without any money. So we picked up a little cash here and there and sponged on her relatives, and manned the picket lines. It was a lot of fun.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You never had any doubts though at the time?

JIM PIERCE:

That we'd win?

WILLIAM FINGER:

Having been married a week.

JIM PIERCE:

No, No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So after you got the contract you went back to work for Western Electric?

JIM PIERCE:

Went back to work for Western Electric and a lot of us got together and decided that we needed a real union and decided that the CIO was the union that we wanted. There was a movement at that point among some of the guys to … and this was the installers, a movement among some of the people to get a charter through AF of L and others through CIO. AF of L would not offer a charter, they wanted to put us in the IBEW, which already had a few telephone workers scattered across the country. We didn't want a charter … I mean we didn't want to be a part of an existing union, we wanted our own telephone union, and when they were unsuccessful, and I wasn't in this negotiation because I was leaning towards the CIO. But when they were unsuccessful in getting anything moving with AF of L, we went to CIO and formed the Telephone Workers Organizing Committee. We got an Organizing Committee Charter. Allen Haywood was put in … appointed by Phil Murray as the, you know, temporary Director, and we started organizing telephone workers in the CIO. There wasn't any full time staff to amount to anything, maybe two or three people. The rest of us were doing it on our own time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

When you all went on this strike, and this was '48, I guess.

JIM PIERCE:

'47.

WILLIAM FINGER:

'47. Were you in contact with other telephone workers in different parts of the country doing the same thing? Was this just a strict …

JIM PIERCE:

No, it was all over the country. It was a large national strike …

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't want to have this in your plan, that was my …

JIM PIERCE:

Oh no, no, no. It was a national strike.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you had gotten candid instructions (?) from other people? What was the network like, I mean who coordinated that?

JIM PIERCE:

It was most uncoordinated, as you would think of coordination now, the trade union was. It was just people on strike. Each of the telephone systems had a … well, Southern Bell had a union, the Western Electric Installers had one union called the National Federation of … anyway it was Local 77, I can't remember what the name was … Local 77, that was the Installers, the Long Lines people in Western had a different union, the factories had a different union, the operating company, Southern Bell, Southwestern Bell, all of these had a different union, and they were loosely a part of the National Federal of Telephone Workers, but it was so very loose that any local could do anything that it wanted to, and our local covered about five or six states and had five or six thousand or maybe two or three thousand members, a pretty good size local in those days.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But Allen Haywood hadn't worked with telephone

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workers before. I mean, the CIO hadn't sent anybody down during that strike, it was strictly a wild cat …

JIM PIERCE:

That's right. Now, as the strike progressed, we got help. When I say help, it was mostly in the form of just coming by and supporting you on the picket line, talking to you and things like that, but CIO and the people I knew who were CIO members are very responsive to some of our needs. Some of us got part time jobs during the strike. Some CIO planner, maybe an AF of L, I don't know, but the CIO people, I think, took a good look at this group of militant telephone workers … I think when we went to them later asking for a charter, I think they responded to that request as a result of the strike and the militancy shown in the picket line.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I was asking some details about that because that was your first taste of a real strike … I mean yourself.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And that seemed to push you personally from working as an installer to a more avid interest in the CIO as an organization.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

How did that happen? What kind of interest did you take after the contract was signed?

JIM PIERCE:

I became an active union member. I helped organize, but I was still just a local guy … as we traveled, and the installers did travel from telephone location to telephone location we talked to the operators

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and the linemen and people like that in the operating company who we were trying to convince them to come CIO also, but it was just that kind of activity.

WILLIAM FINGER:

There was a strong move among all the workers then.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right. Our installers had found their way. They knew they wanted to go CIO. We already had a charter, but we were working in buildings where the telephone operators, lineman, and so forth were members of … well after that strike, the National Federation of Telephone Workers was reformed into the Communication Workers of America, CWA, and they were trying, I guess, to strengthen CWA and move it away from this company domination. We were trying, and they wanted to stay independent, we were trying to move these people out of the CWA into the CIO Telephone Workers Organizing Committee. So, it was that kind of organizing effort that I engaged in there for a while. But even at that point, I wasn't really dedicated to a life in the trade union movement. I was an installer. I would do most of my organizing on the job. I had not really decided that that is what I wanted to be … It just wasn't that strong. There was no question in my mind that … the CIO was the way for the people to go, that we needed a strong union, that we needed all of that, but I made no decision at that point to be an active strong leader in trade union movement or anything like that. It didn't happen that way then. What happened was about

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a year and a half after the strike … well, nine or ten months after the strike, we had our first child … Linda was born, and about six months after that Pat developed TB, and we were living and working in Fort Worth. So, she had to go into the hospital in Dallas, which was 30 miles in one direction from Fort Worth, and she had a sister in Mineral Wells which was about 50 miles west of Fort Worth. So Anne took Linda, Pat went into the hospital, and I moved in with another sister and brother-in-law there in Fort Worth, we just broke our family up completely. One day after work I would go see Pat at the hospital, the next day I would go over to Mineral Wells and see Linda, … it was tough years … a tough time, but at least I could see her, it wasn't too far, and I could see Linda. Oh, just a few weeks after she went into the hospital, the company decided that even though there was plenty of work for me to do in Fort Worth, they wanted me in Wichita Falls, which was way out west in the state, and I went to them and asked them to change their minds, to let me stay there in Fort Worth, explained my problem, and the guy I talked to said well, that's your problem, not mine, and you're going on to Wichita Falls or else. We had a union meeting that night …

WILLIAM FINGER:

What union was this?

JIM PIERCE:

This is Local 77 Telephone Workers Organizing Committee unknown I mean, and … but it was a local union meeting and one of the guys

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reported this to the membership, and the contract was very weak at this point and there was no way they could keep me from being transferred. So they came up with the idea that two people in that whole union under the contract could not be transferred. That was the President of the Local Union, and the Secretary-Treasurer of the Local Union had to stay in Fort Worth so they could negotiate with the company. Anybody else could be transferred anywhere, and there was just one way to keep me from having to go to Wichita Falls being away from my wife and child, was to elect me Secretary Treasurer, so the Secretary-Treasurer resigned and they elected me Secretary-Treasurer and then notified … by that time I just took some time, because we had an election to go through, and they notified the company that they had to move me back from Wichita Falls to Fort Worth … for work because I was now the Secretary-Treasurer of the union, and that is when I became active there was never any question in my mind after that where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You are still working in this …

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yeah. I was very much a part-time Secretary-Treasurer, you know, and I didn't know anything about it. I took a correspondence course in bookkeeping so that I could be a good Secretary-Treasurer, and I stayed Secretary-Treasurer of that local until I went on the staff of CIO.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What made you want to go on the staff of CIO?

JIM PIERCE:

I don't know what made me want to. I got an offer. When I got back to Fort Worth, they had not

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organized a CIO Industrial Union Council in Forth Worth, and we decided that we needed a CIO Industrial Union Council. I went to work getting this group together, and we had a meeting, and I really thought that since I had worked so hard to organize the Industrial Union Council that I would be elected an officer. But it didn't happen. Just before the meeting, the man from the regional CIO office took me off to the side, and he said "Jim, don't run for office because the boss is going to ask you to go on the staff." So he did ask me to go on the staff at the time, and I thought it was a good opportunity to help other people get a good strong union.

WILLIAM FINGER:

They must have … did they observe you while you were forming that Industrial Union Council?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Is that what precipitated the offer?

JIM PIERCE:

I am sure of that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That was the only evidence of the kind of work that you did.

JIM PIERCE:

Well that plus helping other groups in strike. We had set up … there was a strike in Pangburn Candy Company, two or three hundred women mostly horribly abused by the company, organized in a union, and I helped the packing house workers organize them, you know, part time, in my spare time actually, and they went on strike. Now, you know, I was an installer for the telephone company, I was Secretary-Treasurer of my local, but I helped on a picket line and we set up, even before we got the Industrial Union Council with the help of … oh some very liberal

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people in Forth Worth, we set up an organization called the League for Social Justice, I believe that was it, and we put out leaflets … well the editor of the Little Labor paper was active in this league and they elected me chairman of this League for Social Justice, and we started putting out hand bills about Pangburn Candy, don't buy Pangburn … a boycott, trying to bring …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Small Town.

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yes. The labor movement, we really got all the labor movement involved in this.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Other parts of the community too, or just …

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yes, other parts, sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Which ones?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh, we had … I'll never forget a lawyer and his wife, Jack and Margreat Carter, Willard Barr, was the editor of the Little paper, a few people in the black community became involved in it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you do that kind of coalition work, or were you working with the labor?

JIM PIERCE:

At this point, we had formed … the League for Social Justice evolved out as a kind of coalition that was going there between unions and liberals and blacks, and we had regular monthly dinner meetings upstairs over a Chinese restaurant. We couldn't meet in the restaurant, we couldn't meet in the hotel, we couldn't meet anyplace because it was interracial. But there was a Chinese Restaurant He wouldn't serve us in his restaurant, but he had a place up over his restaurant that he let us use

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for a meeting room. So we came back once a month there, and out of these kind of little meetings, came the League for Social Justice. Out of the League for Social Justice came the need for a stronger coordinated labor movement calling for the CIO Industrial Union Council, then we organized the CIO Industrial Union Council.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And then you got hired?

JIM PIERCE:

And then I went on the staff.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who hired you?

JIM PIERCE:

Bob Oliver. Bob Oliver was Regional Director of CIO then. It was the old CIO Southern Organizing Committee. Van Bittner was in charge of it. The CIO Southern Organizing Committee …

WILLIAM FINGER:

John Riffe?

JIM PIERCE:

John Riffe was maybe Vann's assistant or something. John was up above way up above me.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Texas was then in the Southeast region?

JIM PIERCE:

Well the CIO Southern Organizing Committee started over here, I guess, and went all the way to Texas. In fact, we had a few campaigns over in New Mexico during that time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What's your first impression of going on CIO on the Southern Organizing Committee?

JIM PIERCE:

Elation, I guess, at the thought that I could do full time what I had nearly been doing full time anyway.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What about your perception of the organization. They had just been through two tough years with Operation Dixie.

JIM PIERCE:

I probably didn't know that much about that at

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that point. My work had been so localized in Fort Worth I had been so involved in two things, but by this time I'm a devout socialist. The labor movement at that time is torn between the communist element on one hand, and the … well, there is more than one hand, there are a lot of hands, but there was quite a struggle between the socialists, as I perceive myself to be and the communist, and so we had that kind of internal thing within the CIO, and I was so involved in that struggle, in the Painburn Strike and the League and the Industrial Union Council, I didn't really know what was going on outside that. Really, I didn't.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You said locally, when you worked for CIO, …

JIM PIERCE:

When I first worked for CIO, it was all within the state of Texas. At that point, it was all within Texas. Later, I did some work in Oklahoma, some work in New Mexico, some work in Louisiana, but at that point, they hired me, set me up with another guy in Fort Worth and we started organizing Fort Worth.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who influenced you, or maybe it wasn't a person, maybe it was events to call yourself a devote socialist in 1948 or 1949?

JIM PIERCE:

In the coalition right after I became Secretary-Treasurer of my local and started to … got back to Fort Worth and started attending the meetings of the coalition with people like the Carters and Willard Barr and Ross Mathews, business agent for the Machinist Union that had the big Consolidated plant, aircraft factoryx … These

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were well read people and they …

WILLIAM FINGER:

They were older?

JIM PIERCE:

Much older. I won't say much older. Yeah, they were older. None of us were real old. There were a few people down through there that had come with the CIO from the sit in strikes and were very active trade unionists back in the thirties and then when they started to set up an organizing committee they brought a number of those people South … there was a guy named Joe Sahan who was an UAW organizer …

WILLIAM FINGER:

A lot of the people came from the Mine Workers.

JIM PIERCE:

A lot of them came from the Mine Workers, a lot of them came from UAW. The real backbone of the old CIO Southern Organizing Committee, though were the miners. And you know this is normal, Phil Murray was President of CIO, the steel workers had been organized by the miners, there … they had done a pretty good job of organizing their industries and there were representatives now available to go help other people.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Plus John Lewis's influence too among a lot of people.

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure, sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was there anyone in Texas at the time though of the … I don't know caliber or influence of the way people talk like that about Van Bittner or John Wright or Walter Reuther for that matter. There wasn't one person like that who influences you.

JIM PIERCE:

No. Bob, Joe, an old gentlemen named Andy

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Hardesty who always carried a receipt book for the NAACP legal defense fund, and was Chairman of the State CIO Committee on human rights, he and I spent a lot of time together. He probably did more to get me active and then concerned and involved in the civil rights movement than any other single person did.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Andy?

JIM PIERCE:

Hardesty. There is guy named Don Ellenger who is now dead, but at that time was very active in the trade union movement, but these people together with the Carter's and the Barr's and other people like that, they were older, they had read more, they had a much better education, and they kept pressing books at me. Books, ideas, you know …

WILLIAM FINGER:

People took an interest in you?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

It sounds like local people, not …

JIM PIERCE:

That's right it was local people. Local people and the organizers who were down with the CIO at the time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you know Walter Reuther?

JIM PIERCE:

Then? Oh no, no, no.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were just in Texas.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right, that's right. I met Phil Murray about two years after … or maybe a year after I went on staff, the first time I had ever met him … Allen Haywood about the same time. It wasn't until I became coordinator of the Industrial Union Department that I had been able to sit down with John L. Lewis and talk.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you are still cutting your teeth?

JIM PIERCE:

I still am.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What are some of the other things you remember. You left in '54 right?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Five years you were with the CIO Organizing Department?

JIM PIERCE:

Right. In 1954 the merger talks between AFL-CIO were under way. I had five years of fighting the AF of L, I had five years of thinking about where I wanted to go. I didn't want to stay with a merged AFL-CIO. I had become very active in the Civil Rights struggle. I just couldn't see going off to merge the organization because I knew the AF of L representatives or at least the AF of L representatives that I knew did not share my ideas and dreams. I didn't want to be associated with them so, Jim Carey was Secretary-Treasurer of CIO and of the CIO Organizing Committee, I had met him a time or two. He, or somebody in his office called and asked me to transfer over from the CIO to the IUE. We had organized two or three plants for IUE at that time. It was a brand new union created out of the … as a result of the expulsion of UE from CIO, and it didn't have any representatives in the state. We had successfully organized two or three plants for IUE, and they needed a service representative and somebody to continue their organizing efforts. They were on their feet by this time financially, and they could afford to hire a couple of representatives, so they hired me and Red Purcell. We transferred over from the CIO to the IUE.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Are they now a member of the merged AFL-CIO?

JIM PIERCE:

They were a member of the merged AFL-CIO.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you were uncomfortable working for them.

JIM PIERCE:

No, because, you know, it was an international union. It made its own policies; just being a member of the AFL-CIO doesn't …

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

WILLIAM FINGER:

Before we go on with IUE because I think that is an important story, how UE was expelled and how IUE was formed. A few more questions about the CIO.

JIM PIERCE:

Okay.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were on the organizing committee, or were you under the Regional Director or was there a difference?

JIM PIERCE:

There was no difference. I was a member of the staff of the CIO Organizing Committee. Each state in the South had a Director and Sub-Directors and I worked directly under Bob in Texas.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who did Bob report to?

JIM PIERCE:

Well, Van Bittner until he died, and then for a short period of time a guy named Baldanzi was Director. He was camped, he was trouble.

WILLIAM FINGER:

[unclear]

JIM PIERCE:

[unclear] came out with a bunch of report forms that he didn't like … oh hell, we had to strike a time or two inside the group.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Well he finally went to AFL, right? United Textile?

JIM PIERCE:

He went to UTW, right. Then John Riffe became the Director of the Southern CIO Organizing Committee.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So the State Director Bob Oliver reported to the Director of the Southern Organizing Committee.

JIM PIERCE:

Right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And then he reported to Al Haywood and Phil Murray.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Who were … well there are a couple of names I could throw at you … I'm interested in this … at this particular time, the role of liberal intellectuals like Lucy Rendolph Mason, for example, was a trouble shooter, she worked out of the Atlanta office, she went around to hot spots and she walked in … she was 55 or 60 years old and she did various things. Other intellectuals wrote like David Burgess. Were you aware of those kinds of roles a few played?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure, because they, in many cases, became involved in our organizing campaign as you know. We'd start an organizing campaign, we'd run into trouble, all kinds of trouble, then we'd have to call on these people … the specialists from the Atlanta office … the writers were always in and out. We had one guy who did publicity for just Texas but many times … I can't remember the guys name from the Atlanta office that helped me to write. Lucy would come in.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Lucy who?

JIM PIERCE:

Mason.

WILLIAM FINGER:

She came into some …

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, into the area into the specific campaign … There was …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Is it amyth about her Virginia heritage in helping her get around to places you couldn't get. Is that the way it really was?

JIM PIERCE:

She made some beautiful contacts for us. There was another guy. He headed up a Department called Religion and Labor.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Wasn't …

JIM PIERCE:

Ramsey. What was his first name? Anyway, he would come in and try to muster church support for the organizing campaign. You were always getting somebody from outside to come in and help on things like that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Besides assisting, did you feel like they were essential?

JIM PIERCE:

I don't know that I had a feeling there. I was told … I was young, and I was told that they were coming in to help, and I accepted it as help and in most cases it was help. The most help it was to me, it broadened my view of labor movement and the liberal movement because they weren't organizing, you were sitting around in the motel or a room someplace talking about the old times.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So besides affecting the campaign, they affected you personally?

JIM PIERCE:

In my individual life, that was their biggest contribution. I think they helped me a lot more in developing my ideas than actually on the organizing campaigns.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Can you remember say on Lucy Mason, how many times she came to Texas?

JIM PIERCE:

No, I have no idea. I came in contact with her maybe two or three times in those five years.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What about during those years any rank and file people that were part of campaigns. Do you remember particular people very vividly then for one reason or another?

JIM PIERCE:

Sure. You know I can hardly remember my own name, but I can recall numerous instances of extreme courage and dedication on the part of people inside the plant and people in the community. I am sure you don't want individual experiences, but …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Maybe we'll get some of those later.

JIM PIERCE:

But there were a lot of people …

WILLIAM FINGER:

You remember specific people?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure. In many cases they eventually became staff members during that period. I kept a lot of the old leaflets and old records and reports from that time because I just like to go back and look at them and think about the campaign in Louisiana, or in Corpus Christi. You know, you just like to look back occasionally.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you happen to … this is just kind of off the top of my head, but did you ever run into a fishermens strike during the early fifties that was being run by … I guess, by the fur and leather workers.

JIM PIERCE:

Down in Louisiana.

WILLIAM FINGER:

All around the coast, John Russell told me about a two year …

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, I read about it. I wasn't involved in that. But I did read about it. In fact, it was during that period, and I don't remember where or when, I first met H. L. Mitchell, and I think he might have been involved in that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

I think he was working for the Meatcutters but maybe …

JIM PIERCE:

I think so. I don't remember.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Your transition to IUE-it makes sense the way you were disturbed by the merger within the organization and you went to work for an international. What kind of residual influence was there from UE. Were all the communist party people … they weren't around, right?

JIM PIERCE:

Well, they had no locals in Texas. I think they may have had one or two small units. You know, like electric, you have a master contractor, you have little tiny units scattered that come under national agreement. There may have been one or two UE units in Texas at that time that I wasn't aware of. One that I was aware of because somebody had wanted me to … asked me to go over and try to raid it, get out of UE and into IUE, and I told them I wasn't interested. There were too many unorganized people to organize, instead of raiding a union that was already established, and I just didn't do it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So your primary commitment then was still to trade union work. I mean, it wasn't that you had gotten so involved with Civil Rights and other things that you were working more with coalition? You were working for IUE.

JIM PIERCE:

I was working for IUE, yes, I was involved in the Civil Rights thing, and one of the understandings we had was that I could continue that completely as a staff member for IUE. In fact, Carey encouraged

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and protected me during that period because it wasn't easy, you know, to … well, there was a lot of criticism even from our own locals about my involvement in the Civil Rights movement. And when they would complain to Carey, he would just ignore it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What kind of involvements would this kind of work mean?

JIM PIERCE:

Well, during the CIO days we worked real hard … most of it was just getting money together for the legal defense funds fight on what eventually became the Brown case. But then after that, oh in '55 and '56 actually trying to integrate the unions, insisting that we have our conventions, our State CIO Conventions in an integrated facility. There were just all kinds of … like, we organized a plant that was a former AF of L plant that had separate seniority lists, and we forced them to integrate the seniority list. I, you know, … putting non-discrimination clauses in union contracts for example and encouraging others to do it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you did start at home. I mean you started with your locals.

JIM PIERCE:

Absolutely.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was the IUE, were most of those locals mostly white?

JIM PIERCE:

Most of them, yes. Remember, IUE now as factory workers go, was among the better paid, more skilled workers, and there was an awful lot of whites in the IUE plants. In fact a great majority.

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Now, when I went to work for CIO, we set up a little office in the packing house workers local office. We had a little one room office in their building in Fort Worth which is a large, one of the largest locals of packing house workers in the country, and so we were always involved with … and I have always been closely identified … I identify with people from the packing house workers union because of those early years we were in there in every activity. And, of course, it … even at that point it was very much an integrated union, blacks were active and strong in the leadership capacity and I worked very closely with them.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you try to bring some of those people onto your staff with IUE?

JIM PIERCE:

We didn't have a staff. The only staff we had was me and Red Purcell.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You became Regional Director though, right?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, much later and over here.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you were in Texas for say how long?

JIM PIERCE:

I was in Texas for about a year or a year and a half with IUE then they started picking me to more or less involve myself in other states, to trouble-shoot. I had got some experience at that point in negotiating, handling NLRB cases, arbitration cases, so they started lifting me out of Texas and sending me to Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida and places like that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But you were still organizing and servicing locals and negotiating contracts.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And grievances?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You had full …

JIM PIERCE:

You weren't doing all of these at one time, but it was interesting. I thought, … they gave me an opportunity to get a very good trade union education because they allowed me to involve myself so much.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you aware of things in Texas similar to that League of Social Justice on a state-wide level, like a Texas coalition, the Texas Observer.

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure, sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you meet Larry Goodwin during those years?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah, yeah, and Ronnie Dugger … Ronnie is still a good friend of mine, and Larry … Larry is at Duke isn't he … yeah, yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

He keeps doing the same work …

JIM PIERCE:

Sure, I knew all of those guys. Mrs. Randolph, who was the financial angel for the Observer, is a great old lady. We had quite a thing going then. It was during that period that the Democratic party in Texas deserted the Democratic party and the only real tie we had with the national party was through the various coalitions we had going at that time.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, you represented labor in the different coalition meetings. You along with other people.

JIM PIERCE:

Sure.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you becoming a spokesman in their eyes?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh gosh, I don't know. I was heavily

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involved … well, I doubt that, I was still awful young … I was the young punk on the staff.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were working under Red Purcell?

JIM PIERCE:

Well not really at this point with IUE. We … in CIO he was over me, when we transferred to IUE, we were just two representatives, that's all it was. We'd organize a plant, and he would negotiate a contract; the next one he would organize and I would negotiate the contract. In fact, it was kind of a co-worker kind of thing. But I was more active in the Civil Rights movement. I was more active in the State CIO Council. I was more active in the political action arm of the CIO. Red pretty well limited himself to organizing, and I went on the board of the State CIO Council, for example, and he did not. You know, things like that. At this point I was involved in a lot more different things than he was.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were you still living in Fort Worth at the time?

JIM PIERCE:

Right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So, did IUE grow in Texas?

JIM PIERCE:

Very much. It's a nice big solid union over there now.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You and Red Purcell took it from scattered locals …

JIM PIERCE:

From nothing actually. See there were no IUE locals when we first became involved with IUE. While we were still with CIO we organized a few plants for IUE

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under the CIO banner, then when we transferred over to IUE we started actually setting up … we organized a lot of plants.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you find it harder … I mean, these were the fifties when things were tough, certainly tough in this state.

JIM PIERCE:

They were tough.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was harder about organizing in the fifties than say in the late forties. You were younger in the forties so your perceptions have changed … but, I mean, was the political atmosphere tougher, or was the mood of the workers not as much pro union or what were the factors?

JIM PIERCE:

I found it very easy to organize the workers. Your opposition from the companies were … was horrible. They used a lot of goon squad tactics. They attempted to turn a community and the churches and you know groups like that against you. You were denied facilities, you know, for meetings. We held a hell of a lot of meetings under trees and in the dark and out in the woods and out on the roads … well in Texas too. It was hard and particularly since we were under direct orders and certainly agreed with these orders not to have segregated meetings. It is pretty damn hard to have an integrated meeting in East Texas or Louisiana in 1952 or 1953, when you were organizing a saw mill out in the middle of a rural area … it was hard, but fun.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was it dangerous?

JIM PIERCE:

Looking back, I guess we were pretty stupid.

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Yeah, it was dangerous, darned dangerous.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did Pat ever tell you why don't you skip that one under the trees?

JIM PIERCE:

No, she was with me all the way. I guess I wouldn't have made it if she hadn't of been. She was tough … but there was a standard number of arrests for everything from … well, the arrest would say one thing, the arrest would really mean an integrated meeting or putting out leaflets or something like that … a few beatings along the way.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Were they Klan?

JIM PIERCE:

We ran into them occasionally. Not too often where I was.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But the mood I am trying to get at is different than Mitchell and those guys in 1934. I mean they met under trees, but it sounded more dangerous when they talk about the kind of meetings they had in 1934.

JIM PIERCE:

I don't know.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You weren't there in 1934?

JIM PIERCE:

I wasn't there.

WILLIAM FINGER:

It's a big jump to 1963, but I want to move along because I think … you were in Texas then for about 15 years.

JIM PIERCE:

We lived … I went to Texas in 1946, I guess, the latter part of '46 probably. Pat and I were married in 1947. They lived … Pat and the kids lived in Texas until we moved over here in 1961. From '56 to '61, I worked for IUE throughout the South. For a number of years I spent nearly all of my time in Florida. They were

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in Texas, I was in Florida, I would go back and forth, they would come back back and forth. During the summers they would move into the little motel with me wherever I was, and when school started I would take them all back home and see them once every month or six weeks after that until the next summer, but they lived in Texas, right, until '61.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Why so much concentration on Florida? Were you Regional Director of IUE?

JIM PIERCE:

I was kind of in charge of the organizing efforts in Florida at that point. There was a lot of industry and a lot of heavy electrical industry moving into Florida and they asked me to go down and you know organize the plants like GE and Westinghouse, and Sperry and Strombery Carlson and people like that.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you know Jim Carey?

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So he was still …

JIM PIERCE:

Oh sure, he was President all during the time that I was with IUE. But it was virtually an impossible place to take your children. You know, the school situation was bad; the living conditions were bad. Florida was going through a real boom in population growth, and schools were like half-day things. You'd go half days to school, and it was just a bad situation.

Secretary Treasurer of IUE, Al Hartnett, at the time, tried many times to get me to move my family down there, but I just couldn't see it.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You didn't work with migrants or black workers

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that much during those Florida years. This was still mostly highly skilled industry?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And they were mostly just white workers?

JIM PIERCE:

Mostly.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you come in contact with migrants?

JIM PIERCE:

It was in Florida when I resumed my interest in migrants. In my early CIO days, I have done a considerable amount of organizing in Texas, along the Texas coast, and even out around El Paso, I saw and became involved as a part of the Civil Rights struggle some of the problems of migrants. In fact, you know, when you had a day off you couldn't drive all the way to Fort Worth, and a campaign was slack, well a lot of times you'd just drive out and learn things. You know, see people and talk to people. So, I developed an interest in, and I think this probably comes from my own rural background, an interest in problems that they had in the Texas valley, but there wasn't much that we could do about it. We did it through the CIO Council, we did what we could, but it wasn't a lot. But then when I got back to Florida … when I got to Florida as kind of a State Director for IUE, I continued my involvement in the Civil Rights movement, in the political movement, and they were involved with migrants and that is when I first became involved with what we call the eastern stream of migrants, but not very heavily involved.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You were learning.

JIM PIERCE:

Learning is right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Was anyone working with you then?

JIM PIERCE:

Yes, the National Council of Churches was doing some work, The American Friends Service Committee was doing some work. Most of it was service type work and not organized.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What happened in IUE to make you move on? In 1961 you were … '56 to '61 you were in Florida and then you were with IUE for about two more years …

JIM PIERCE:

Yeah in '61 they asked me to transfer to the Southeast and become, I think it was Regional Director was the title. The District of IUE stretched all the way from Philadelphia to Florida. They set up a southern division and I guess they called me Regional Director. They asked me to move over here and take charge of IUE's operations in Virginia and south, and actually told me that I could move any place I wanted to. So Pat and the kids had been a habit now for a number of years, were traveling with me during the summer if I travelled, or stayed with me if I was in one location, came over and we spent the summer together. At this point I was servicing a number of locals all the way from Virginia to Florida. We picked Charlotte, and I came over here as Regional Director of IUE.

WILLIAM FINGER:

You told me once before that you picked Charlotte because of its airport?

JIM PIERCE:

We had to have a place where you could hop a plane and go someplace fast in case of a strike situation. We also had young children. Linda was in school and I think maybe Brenda had had a year of school. Anyway, three young

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children and we were looking for a school situation that was integrated, where it didn't look like there were going to be very many problems. Atlanta was the logical place, but Atlanta had people running around threatening to … violence and the ax handle and all that kind of thing. I just wasn't about to move into that kind of environment with my children. Charlotte was calm, it was integrated on that freedom of choice thing. We found a section of town where the schools were … at least the high school was pretty well integrated. In fact, Garinger has about the same number of … percentage of blacks to whites as it did then. It was as well an integrated school as we could find.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So you moved to Charlotte in 1961.

JIM PIERCE:

Right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And you were able to stay closer to home then? You didn't have to do the Fort Worth - Florida…

JIM PIERCE:

I did a lot of travelling, but I had staff. I had 12 or 14 staff people who were working under my direction and they did the day to day stuff. I still went in on campaigns. I still went in to handle NLRB. cases, or arbitrate agreements, or negotiate a contract. I still did all that, but at least I was home some of the time, and I had an office here for the first time in my life.

WILLIAM FINGER:

In 1961, then, that was the first time you had staff under you really?

JIM PIERCE:

No from '56 to '61, and particularly when I was in Florida, I had four or five people working

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under me.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did you make an effort during this time to bring in black workers into the IUE, or was the work force so skilled where you were trying to organize it, that it was usually higher skilled, mostly white work force.

JIM PIERCE:

The most you could do on that during this period … you remember, your basic thrust is organizing already existing plants. So in the organizing end of it, you had no control. You organized whoever the company hired. Now when you negotiate the contract, you bore down on it very strongly … integrated seniority lists, nondiscrimination cluase, hire more blacks, hire more blacks, hire more blacks. And where we had strength we were able to accomplish a great deal, yes.

WILLIAM FINGER:

So after two years as Regional Director here with about 14 staff people, you moved on to IUD?

JIM PIERCE:

I didn't move on. I stayed on IUE's payroll and … as a member of the IUE staff right up until 1968, but I was on loan to the IUD. What happened they decided to set up the IUD Coordinated Organizing Campaign, now remember Reuther is President, they've merged, Reuther is President of the Industrial Union Department, and Jim Carey is Secretary Treasurer of the Industrial Union Department, and they decided they wanted to do some coordinated organizing among the industrial union …

WILLIAM FINGER:

Jim Carey is Secretary-Treasurer of the Industrial Union and the National President of IUE.

JIM PIERCE:

That's right, and … so they decided they

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wanted to do this organizing effort. They picked five locations, they picked the Boston area, the Philadelphia area, the Texas area, Detroit area, and the Southeast, and they were going to do really concentrated organizing of all the industrial unions working together. There was a special industry campaign to organize, a major thrust, to organize the textile industry. So you had five regional projects that they decided on plus one industry. Well, there for a while they were dickering with the possibility of a second industry which was wood, but that was also in the southeast.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What was the one industry?

JIM PIERCE:

Textiles. Textiles, some attention given to wood, and all of the textile thing fell in the southeast Textiles was here of course and then the wood thing was in this area also, furniture. The first idea was to put a coordinator in each of the areas, a special coordinator for textiles, and a special coordinator for furniture, wooden furniture. They had a number of meetings and Bill Pollack and John Chupka of Textile wanted me to take over the textile drive, the industry drive. Nick Zonarich was the Director of organizing and was put in charge of this. IUE wanted me to stay closely allied with them and was willing to release me and even continue to pay my salary if I would take on the southeastern drive. So I compromised. They decided that I would be the coordinator of both textile and wood, the regional coordinator for the industry drive. So I became the coordinator not only of

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the southeastern region for IUE but director of a special textile drive and a special wooden furniture drive which never really did get off the ground to well. But the textile did. So IUE loaned me to the the Industrial Union Department to be the coordinator for IUD from '63 to '68.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Because they wanted you to head the southeastern regional?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Are you tired?

JIM PIERCE:

No.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Okay. Just a few things about those IUE years in Florida from '61 to '63. Any particular campaigns come to mind that seemed very important. Did you learn things about the various industries, say about GE in Florida, things that you thought about when you got to J.P. Stevens later … you know, when one fell and you understand a snow ball effect, for example.

JIM PIERCE:

Not in Florida. Of course, you know, I was working in all the other southeastern states at the same time I was working in Florida. I think I learned a great deal from organizing … oh, for example, helping on the GE plant in Rome, Georgia, the GE plant in Roanoke, Virginia, negotiating a contract for the American Boxch-Arma in Columbus, Mississippi.

WILLIAM FINGER:

What year was this?

JIM PIERCE:

Oh gosh!

WILLIAM FINGER:

I'll have to look at your files.

JIM PIERCE:

You'll have to look at the file. Now, I don't

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have the vaguest idea.

WILLIAM FINGER:

These were the IUE years?

JIM PIERCE:

These were the IUE years. I don't know that there was any one. You gather experiences, techniques, meet people during nearly every organizing campaign that lends something to your actions in the future, you know. You run into situations …

WILLIAM FINGER:

What about from the industry's point of view, the leverage points in industry like, I mean, I don't know as much about GE as say I do about Stevens. Did you have to break them?

JIM PIERCE:

GE was always a tough one.

WILLIAM FINGER:

That's what I thought.

JIM PIERCE:

Awful tough to organize, and they did call on me … They did not call on the community for support, they did enlist the white citizens council in their campaign, they did call on this jack legged preacher, … here this guy, what's his name, George Heaton, calls himself an industrial psychologist. He is a former Baptist preacher who would go into a place where you were organizing and after the company had pitched a party and got the workers about half drunk, he'd come in a preach a sermon, you know. You had those kind of things, and you had them in all industries. You had it over in the Vickers campaign in Jackson, Mississippi, You had the company, with the aid of the people in the community, putting out a picture of Jim Carey dancing with a beautiful black woman, who was, I believe, the wife of some Ambassador from an African country, They used all that stuff, and they used

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these fundamentalists, anti-union publications. There is not a lot of difference in the industry down here. You can't pick out one and say it didn't use a racial thing and the other one did. They all used it. They all use the same tactics, the same lawyers, the same tricks to try to beat the union, and you learn from all of them. That is why it was not difficult to switch gears five times in a day … talking about a Stevens campaign, you are talking about a steel mill campaign, a furniture campaign, a packing house or an assembly plant, or an electrical plant—not that much difference. People that work in these plants all have the same hopes and dreams whether they are black or white or female or male or young or old.

WILLIAM FINGER:

But there are some differences in what the industry can do, for example, Stevens can shift their work to other towns.

JIM PIERCE:

Oh yeah.

WILLIAM FINGER:

And that makes them tougher when they can transfer work?

JIM PIERCE:

That's right, but so could GE, and so could Westinghouse and so could a lot of others, you know. So you recognize those tactics, you've understood those problems from working in other industry.

WILLIAM FINGER:

Did the assignment in 1963 seem a little overwhelming? You had to head a textile drive, the key thrust of IUD's decision, when you had to head the southeast