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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-0014-3, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
John Russell was an organizer and executive board member of the Fur and Leather Workers Union before it merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in 1955. Russell begins the interview by briefly describing the merger of those two labor organizations, discussing both the limitations and opportunities the merger posed for radical labor activists. Because of Amalgamated's association with the AFL-CIO, Russell explains how former Fur and Leather Workers had to temper their progressive approach to trade unionization and their adherence to radical politics. At the same time, however, the merger broadened their access to workers and allowed them a wider jurisdiction within the movement. He goes on to describe his work as an international representative for Amalgamated, focusing primarily on his work in North Carolina. In describing how he helped to organize a number of locals for poultry workers throughout the state, Russell explains important tactics such as negotiations and strikes as tools of the labor movement. In addition, Russell charts important changes within the movement and discusses such factors as the impact of the civil rights movement, the relationship between labor and anti-war activism during the Vietnam War, and the shift from production to service workers as the primary base of support for organization. Finally, he offers his thoughts on the relationship between politics and labor, emphasizing his belief that the electoral system was deeply flawed and limiting in terms of offering workers power.
John Russell describes his work as an international representative and organizer for the Amalgamated Meat Workers Union following its merger with the Fur and Leather Workers Union in 1955. Russell discusses the limitations and opportunities that resulted from this merger, his work organizing poultry workers, and his thoughts on the changing nature of the labor movement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
John, we left off about 1954, right after the merger happened. When the Fur and Leather Workers merged with the Meatcutters, the district situation was set up. Was 525 set up at the time?
No, 525 came along a lot later, in 1961, and was the result of merging a number of locals we had built while we were at that time part of the Amalgamated Meatcutters.
What was your position in 1955?
In 1955, after the merger, I became an international rep and was charged with aiding organizational work here in the South, with both taking care of other problems like negotiating contracts.
Who did you report to?
The primary report was to vice-president Leon Schacter, whose headquarters is in Washington, D.C. This is the national headquarters, actually there is a local headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, and possibly Philadelphia at that time.
Do you remember what you felt then, in 1955?
Oh, yes.
Did you think at the time, not what you think now, that the merger would really limit what you could say, how you could act, what you could do? Would it mute your radical feelings about trade unions?
Let me just say there were a lot of fears in those days. They weren't the
fears of losing jobs, they were the fears of being suppressed in
developing militant progressive
So you're just trying to talk about the mood, what it was like then?
At that time we had certain fears we couldn't last inside this merged organization. We had a lot of respect for certain people, we certainly had respect for Pat Gorman, whose reputation was above par in most cases with all of our people. But we also had some reservations about other people who were in a strong political position inside the union, and we didn't know whether they had the influence to keep us from staying very long with the Amalgamated- In fact I think that most of our people, with the exception maybe of a few, felt that we wouldn't last long inside the Amalgamated.
Your people up in Chicago?
Up in Chicago, all around the country, there was a feeling we don't know where we're going. We don't know what's going to happen. We're merged, we've got articles of a merger agreement, and we're hoping that they stand up. At the same time we had some very sharp doubts of the ability of us to survive inside this merged group.
That was the kind of feeling you got from the top?
That plus the fact that we ourselves, many of us couldn't see being able to stay long inside the Amalgamated.
Who is we now, people in North Carolina?
People like me. Not just North Carolina, but many other areas of the
country too. All of them had
That's the way you felt?
That's true. I felt the same way. I had my reservations, no argument. But I did say, at the meeting vice-president Schacter presided at with a group of organizers in his district—he had district 2 at that time, and it was the biggest district in the international—I said following that, to our own people, "I don't care, I'm going to build unions. This has given us an opportunity we've never had before in terms of jurisdiction. I'm going out to build unions for the Amalgamated because I think basically it's a decent union, they've got good people leading it and I'm going to do my best to not only build unions for them, but build the kind of unions I believe in. Progressive unions, people with ideas, at that time, discrimination, at that time the big struggles in the South hadn't started yet, do our bit to building a decent, progressive union movement that politically could register its mark."
So how did you go about doing that?
Once I had made up my mind, and you know I had serious doubts about doing
it, we started organizing. We organized right from this town of
Asheville. The first big thing we ever organized was the Farmer's
Federation here. They had
This was '55?
That was '54, no '55, '56. We were challenged in a de-certification by the company, and beat the pants off them later on. We had bargaining rights here, and we extended an agreement, had a good agreement, right up to the time the company went out of business, in about 1959 or 1960. In fact, we had a local established here, Local 49, I can't remember. It was 49.
When you made that decision to try to organize underneath the Meatcutters, what else did you consider doing at the time? You said you had serious doubts.
Everybody, and I was no exception, talked about getting involved in political work, or finding a more positive, not positive, but a job we were sure we would be in for a while.
You didn't know …
It was just a general feeling that we were in danger, and we weren't going to survive too long.
But you never yourself considered taking another position?
No, no, my own personal position was that they almost had to drive me out. That's not because I didn't think I had other abilities, because I knew I did. If I had wanted to be a real bastard I could have probably went with many companies that I dealt with, like A.C. Lawrence or others. They needed sharp young guys who could handle labor relations, and they probably would have paid much more than I ever heard of. But I just couldn't stomach that kind of a thing, Bill, and I never really entertained it seriously except I knew that somewhere along the line I might have to find some other kind of job.
But that was a time when you really questioned whether you would stay inside trade union work, that you would do other kinds of political work?
I questioned severely whether I would be able to stay inside, not that I wanted to, but that I would be able to. But trade union work is the one thing that I understood and knew and was willing to take my chances at.
So after you started organizing the Farmer's Federation in Asheville, and when other campaigns came up, did you feel any kinds of limitations? Compared with how you had been able to work within the Fur and Leather Workers?
Compared with how I worked inside of them?
Yes.
Always you felt somebody was looking over your
So you covered as an international rep North Carolina and you still had parts of East Tennessee?
We went anywhere they wanted to send us, but basically we worked in the Carolinas.
South Carolina?
Yeah.
Anything else you can think of about that time? It seems like it was kind of a, at least in terms of trade unions, a turning point. You were now an amalgamated. Personally, what I'm trying to get at, personally for yourself, if you kind of made a switch in the way you looked at your work?
Not so much that we made a switch, but I at least saw a golden
opportunity to build something for the first time, in a field we never
had before. See, up until then
What kind of unions were those?
Progressive unions, unions that saw more than just the immediate demands of workers, but had a broader outlook on life.
What does that mean, though, progressive unions, like you wanted to build?
One who saw that trade unions weren't the final answer, that unions were
a weapon in the struggle of workers to maintain a decent standard of
living. But at the same time, while we centered on the immediate
problems, to try and lift their sights a little higher and recognize
that if we are going to genuinely have a nation where working people
You'd talk like that to locals?
Oh, yes. We never hid much. We never bragged about what our political points of view were, but we did our best to influence people.
Did you have a program, a more short-range thing? Were you involved in electoral politics? What kind of ways would a progressive union work in this period?
In that period, and in the period up until the sixties, we had very little use for working inside the electoral system. Very frankly, we just didn't feel there was much possibility of doing much with it. We were pretty repelled by the approach of the labor movement as a whole to Wallace in 1948. We were a little bit disillusioned …
You were what to Wallace in 1948?
I'm talking about Henry Wallace, not …
You supported him?
Oh yes, we did. We did, but not the labor movement. They supported
Truman, you understand. But my union supported Wallace. We went out of
our way, and we were a little put off that workers couldn't see the
difference between a guy
So from '55 on into the sixties …
We built unions. We built them almost in a haphazard fashion, because that's, as we saw it, we had to build something in the South. If it was a local here, a local there, it didn't matter whether it had fifty people or twelve people or a hundred people, or a hundred fifty people, the important thing was to get down a base, and then we would talk about the future from there on. We had six different local unions we had built in the South by the beginning of 1960.
Six different …
Six different local unions here in North Carolina that we had never had before. There were five, I mean. There was one local union that was a local of the Swift Oil Refining Company in Charlotte, North Carolina, thirty-five people. In 1960 it becamse pretty apparent to us that this kind of approach was not going to solve the question of organizing in the deep South.
Nineteen what?
In 1960. That what we needed was to be able to pool their finances, their
resources, all the strength their leadership ability, etcetera, and make
a statewide local and use their forces, and their money, to do a real
job of or
In 1960?
It came really in 1961, but the beginning was in 1960. Through the whole thing.
Was that discussed within the locals?
Oh, yes. We had spent about six months preparing these people, getting an agreement out of it, pointing out to them the weaknesses of being single, isolated little local unions. Then we went to a general conference in February of 1961, and at that conference we agreed we would all merge, and that we would have elections, and that we would set up a single treasury, they'd all merge the money they'd have, and that we'd go from there as a single group, and utilize all that forces and all that money to try to accomplish building a good union.
They all supported that?
Yes. Yes at that time we had about three hundred, three hundred twenty-five people in six local unions. You can see why it becamse apparent to us that was not the road to go, and we had to change course.
So you had how many, six hundred …
About three hundred and twenty-five.
About three hundred twenty-five in about five different locals …
Six different locals.
Where were they?
We had one here, that's either 49 or 409, maybe 409, time kind of shrouds my mind. We also had a local we'd set up in Durham, and one in Greensboro, and we had this little Hazlewood group of leather workers out here, 345. We had a local in Charlotte, I think its number was 269, that was Swift Oil Workers. We had a little local down in Raeford, and we had one in Concord, that was the six that we're talking about.
So from fifty-five to sixty-one, you built those six locals.
Yah, and I guess when we first came, when the merger took place between the Amalgamated and the Fur and Leather Workers in this state, I mean in the nation, in this state they had thirty-five people, and that was in Swift Oil down in Charlotte, North Carolina, that was all they had. We built the other ones, and this was the beginning of our organizational work, and in that period of time we had some fantastic struggles. Organizational struggles, for instance, we had an NLRB election against Watson in 1956 …
That's Watson poultry?
Watson Seafood and Poultry. We had one a couple of years later. We had
another campaign another few years later than that, and finally in
either sixty-one or sixty-two. These were the beginning where we had to
make it very clear to the employers that we're going to organize the
plants one way or
How did you establish that with someone as big as A&P? These other ones are small independent ones compared to A&P.
The same way we do with these other ones. I don't think it was any real difference in our approach. If we won an election, we laid down our own position. We said if you want to fight over checkoff or over arbitration, which in those days were the issues used to destroy unions even if you won elections. In other words, they wouldn't give you a checkoff, they wouldn't give you arbitration, and they would let you just set there and die a natural death. They've done the same things with textiles recently …
They still do that now.
Right, they still do it too. We took a position though, that if we win
your place, we don't give a god damn if you offer the highest wage rates
in the world, we're going to keep our sites high enough that we're going
to take you on over checkoffs and arbitration, and you're going to pay.
If you lick us, you're going to bleed too, until you're sick and tired
of the battle. And that was our position then. We went eighteen
Southeastern?
Southeastern Poultry in Charlotte. We went six months with the Carriker Poultry which preceded that, in the same plant, over the same issues even. We fought that, and B&B Poultry up in Burlington, North Carolina. And finally, Rose Hill, we went four years down in Rose Hill, North Carolina.
Four years people were out on strike?
Four years we had picket lines in front of the place. I don't say it was an effective strike, it was a boycott, picket line operation, you know? But they bled too. In fact there were many times in that long four years that they were in the process of trying to make peace with us.
When were those four years in Rose Hill?
That was in, it must have been about sixty-five, sixty-six, give or take a year or two either way.
People that went out were still there four years later?
We had a picket line, that's about all you can say. They could get scabs
in any place, you understand, and those places was no exception. But we
had struggles against them, we carried on consumer picketing. We
picketed Colonial Stores, we picketed the A&P stores, we put out
out hundreds and hundreds of thousands of leaflets as well as creating
problems for them in these places. Until the time came that
Many of these towns used to get some group, a little group of people who could put up forty or fifty thousand dollars combined, and go to the small businessmen's organization in Washington and pick up another hundred and fifty thousand bucks, and put up a poultry plant, in order to get a payroll in town. The result was, of course, that we had all these problems to deal with. Fortunately our history is evolving and history is going to show that we drove out many of these small, cheap independents who would have hung on paying minimum wages or less.
How many did you drive out, do you know?
Well, take Carriker for an example. We drove them out, it took a six months strike. B&B Poultry, with a hundred workers in Burlington, drove them out.
Rockingham Poultry, a big company who came in and said we'll give you a
contract, we'll deal with you, and we even didn't have to go through an
election. These are important gains for workers, because it moves us
forward, you see,
How about with A&P? Did they sign a contract with checkoff and all that too? You had the butchers in A&P all across the state.
Right. When we first struggled with A&P, we won the meatcutters in Durham, we won the meatcutters in Greensboro in almost simultaneous elections, we went through the board at the same time. We won twenty-four to two or twentytwo to two in Durham, and we won twenty-three to eight or nine in Greensboro. That was the beginning, that's only sixty people. We wound up finally with 1400 A&P people in that union. That includes the warehouse down, in Charlotte, the meat warehouse. Today we only have about 850 because of the cut-down in stores as well as layoffs in the plant. The point was that when we first got our first election wins, with A&P in Durham and Greensboro, they sent in an attorney out of Charlotte, a very decent man, I forget his name now …
It wasn't Blakeney …
No, no, they didn't hire Blakeney, they had their own attorney. Anyway,
they sent this guy in, he's dead
You said this to A&P?
To A&P. We didn't get the best contract in the world, but checkoff and arbitration, it was no issue after that. Oh, they made moves now and then, that they're going to take this away, or take that away, or they're going to do this. But every time, we told them, look, you do that, you can't offer us money for the settlement, we want you to know it. The committee knows it, we always built our committee up and told them, and educated them, and worked on them to understand the importance of arbitration, the importance of protecting our gains, the checkoff, to maintain the strength going back in the bargaining the next session. We never had no problem with A&P after that. Then, along came Colonial in 1961, we organized before we organized them, we organized a number of other places with A&P. We organized Wilson, North Carolina, we …
You had to go at them one at a time?
That's how we organized then, we still do it by the way, we organize on a town by town basis. Then we organized Roanoke Rapids, then we organized …
This is still A&P?
Yah. This is outside of Goldsboro …
Rocky Mount?
No, going down seventy …
You mean Smithfield?
Yah, Smithfield.
Well you went town by town then.
Town by town. We'd already built a number of these, but we had no master contract …
New Bern?
No, we tried New Bern and lost, we never did get nowhere. But we went from there and we began to build at A&P. Going into Raleigh, we won that wall to wall. In 1963 we won, first of all we won Fayetteville wall to wall, that was the first place we won, we won the meatworkers first in an election, we won the grocery end against the Retail Clerks, against every opposition they could throw up. And they saw that as a testing grounds but we won it. Then we won Raleigh, then we won Winston-Salem, then we won Asheville, and by then we were in a pretty good shape with A&P plenty of trouble insisted on being stupid in negotiations. Today, of course, we are in pretty good shape with A&P, we have statewide contracts now for many years.
You have a contract with all the towns at the same time?
Right, we have contractwide seniority, with protection on seniority
rights up to two years during layoffs
What did did the membership go from? In 1960 you were three twenty-five, with …
Three twenty-five …
Six locals …
We reached a peak about 1970 or 1971, of four thousand members or better, a little bit better than four thousand. We had at that time about five thousand under contract, but because of right-to-work laws, especially in the poultry plants it's awful hard to maintain a …
Membership …
Membership, up there.
How was that four thousand break down.
We had about at that time four thousand, we had practically half were retail.
Mostly A&P and Colonial?
A&P, Colonial, and Allied at that time. We had Allied
Supermarkets. We also had, and that was the warehouse
Those were pretty small …
They're small, they're not very big, you see. Carolina Meats came after a long strike in 1970 or 1971. We won a plant down there, they had about three or four hundred workers down there. That's how it came about. Three people up to about three hundred. Morton's Frozen Food, about four hundred people. We've had awful losses in the last few years.
Just from layoffs?
Oh yes, plants closing, layoffs, everything. We lost in the last four years, we lost, I'm talking about four years, the last two years, we lost Morton Frozen Foods in December of 1973, with four hundred workers at the poultry plant as well as the baking plant.
Did they close up?
Closed up, they never opened again.
Where did they go?
Well, Morton is ITT, all around the country. They just transferred operations.
Why did they close it? Because of the union?
No, not basically. I think because their plant was antiquated and they
weren't able to produce efficiently there. I guess certainly, while the
rates had improved tremendously and the conditions, it wasn't because of
the union.
So the union didn't have much effect on them one way or the other?
No, I don't even think they would claim that. Of course we had raised wages, but I don't think wages were the reason for company closing plants. Normally, wages are only part of a problem. While I don't say they have some impact, they are not the real reason that you don't. The acccess to markets, the productivity of the plant, the modernization, all these things play a much greater role than the question whether you pay a guy three dollars and a half an hour or three dollars and seventy five.
So then layoffs came too?
Then came, then we lost some additional people, we lost Morgan, we lost Watson with five hundred last year.
Why did you lose them?
He just said we're going out of business, we haven't any money. We're not
going to fight with the union when negotiations come around. He said
we've lost three million dollars in the last few months, we are not
going to keep on losing money, we are not going to fight with the union,
because we just don't think that's profitable. The reason that they
What did all these workers think of the union when the place was closed down? Did they blame it on you?
No, no we never heard that …
Anyplace?
I don't say, maybe some individuals said maybe if the union hadn't come
in we wouldn't have been, but basically
So Local 525 activity in North Carolina kind of built up gradually, very
gradually from '55 to '60
Well, 525 wasn't in being until …
'61
Until '61
What do you mean?
I mean politically, as well on positions.
Politically?
We didn't do it over night. We had eight hundred workers, nine hundred
workers, sometimes it seemed like we stayed years on them when we only
stayed a short time. Eleven hundred, twelve hundred. We had our own
problems with our international.
They felt that you were too autonomous?
I don't know really, sometimes I wondered what they wanted. They agreed and they admitted we built the unions. We built them where no one was ever able, they couldn't build them. The executive vice-president of this union, Harry Poole, he had this district, District 2, he was the director of it for many, many years. In Local 269, the Swift Oil workers in Charlotte with thirty-five people was the best he was able to do. He hung up a lot of charter. It seems to me all he ever worried about was whether we were ever going to get a real foothold out here. That's the way it seemed to me. The only good thing we had going was that I think Pat Gorman was a pretty decent guy, with many of his own guys around him, arguing. He seemed to be a guy who wanted to build unions, philosophically, a decent guy. He understood, you don't build unions cheaply or easily.
Let me understand the district structure then. When the merger happened, I thought you told me before, there was a system established where there weren't districts. Out of the international office, they came straight to the local level. Is that right?
It depends on which merger you're talking about. If you're talking about the Fur and Leather Workers …
No, no, with the Meatcutters, with the merger with the Meatcutters.
I'm saying, you're talking about the Fur and Leather Workers merging with the Meatcutters, that was true. What happened was that districts, the old districts were dissolved, and they merged into the area that already had been established. You see, at that time we had only twenty, maybe forty thousand people. You merged with somebody that had 250,000, you don't dominate the deal. Then we merged later, in 1968, with the Packinghouse Workers Union, then they had to greatly enlarge the number of districts, all around the United States and Canada. New districts were formed with new district directors, in an effort to reach an agreement and compromise on how the new merged union was to be established.
So 525 did report to a district director?
Oh, yah, and Leon Schacter was our director from the beginning of the
merger with the Fur and Leather Workers Union up until the merger with
the Packinghouse Workers Union,
So Don Smith's the district vice-president?
He's in charge of the district, he's the director. He's the …
He covers what, Virginia and North Carolina …
Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and North Carolina South Carolina.
Are the other states all organized on statewide locals?
No, no. There may be some, no I think we were one of the very few, maybe there is two or three more around the United States. Generally speaking, they broke them up into cities and counties. When we proposed this merger …
This is in sixty-one now?
In 1961, with all the six locals, Gorman went along with it, Schacter was
a hundred percent with it. Leon may have some different ideas I can
disagree with very easily, but basically he understands organization,
he's a good guy. He said, you're right. If you want to go with that
merger, that's the only way to go out and develop the muscle to do a
real job. He never hesitated. A few did. I don't think Poole was very
enthusiastic, he never has been and he never did. But Leon was, and in
fact he thought it was his brain-child, he always looked at it, I was
the district director in the Carolinas when they built that local in the
Carolinas nobody
When you started organizing and building this union from three hundred people on up to four thousand, did you feel isolated in North Carolina, or did you get good support from the amalgamated?
Yes, we got good support. I can't quarrel. I can't quarrel with the support we got, I don't say we got every kind of support we should have got. There were times we should have had strike sanction coming and we should have got it without any hindrances. We got it, but it was always a conditioned deal. Instead of saying, here's strike sanction for you people, now we've got enough respect for you, we know you and understand you, you go ahead and if you have to make the strike, you make the strike. I don't have that problem now. First of all, Don Smith is a guy who unequivocally says, okay you got a strike, here's my sanction. That, of course, is okayed by the international. I got it out of Leon in practically every place. Maybe it was because Leon didn't trust us old fur and leather wotkers any more than he did somebody else. But we always got it eventually out of him. We always got pretty good support out of Leon in many other ways too. I got to hand it to this guy, I may disagree with him politically, but god damn, he's a pretty good trade unionist.
So it doesn't ever sound like you felt hindered by the Amalgamated in a way.
No, I felt hindered, but you go ahead anyway. You take your chances of maybe doing something they'll go after you for. This is something you had to do. You had to take your chances.
How did you feel hindered?
You knew that if you made big mistakes that cost them money, they could easily make an argument, dump your butt, what you got? You ain't got no protection.
Your own job, you mean.
I'm not talking about that personal part of it. But they never bothered us. You felt it, but you go fight it. I guess everyone in their right mind has got to consider something like this.
But what was happening in the state? We talked about the international. Things that kind of influence your work. Anything outside the meatpacking industry? The strike, the textile strike in Henderson.
The textile workers strike in Henderson cotton mills, we supported it.
Our local sent money, we sent people up there. We saw it as a very key
strike in this state. We never, that was in 1958, even though we were
individual locals, we always saw the inadequacy of having little locals
trying to develop money, they couldn't do it. Maybe this is one of the
things that helped shape our opinion on certain things. We helped all we
could, all we had the force to do. There was no question of the impact
on my thinking and a number of other
It broke textile's back in a big way.
I'm not saying it didn't. It all depends. I'm sure all the money they
spent, all the time, all the energy, losing it was a tremendous
demoralizing factor for many many years. We lost tremendous struggles
too. Our union in many other areas. You know here. But you don't say,
what the hell, I'm going to fold up and quit working. You don't do that.
I see that out of the Henderson Cotton Mill strike, the same thing we
see out of a Rose Hill, or the same thing we saw out of a Southeastern,
or the same thing we saw out of Carolina Meat, or the same thing we saw
out of the Gerber strike, it was right here. We do a lot of things you
don't count up in terms of money, you don't maybe even count it up in
terms of what we get in the contract. You establish your credibility
with every employer. When I wrote an article a couple of months ago in
our paper, where we said, we want to tell all the employers, we're not a
strike-happy union, we're not foolish. But if strikes are necessary,
that's what we're going to do. I pointed out to them, that in 1973 or
1972, a couple of them, Colonial Stores,
Do you think the people are willing to go with that too?
Oh, I think so.
I mean right now, do you think people are less willing to go on strike now?
I don't say there's not fears, I know there's fears, there's fears of
strikes now because of the unemploymentt situation. We all understand
this, but the point is that if they are properly lead, if the issues are
developed properly, and the proper tactics and strategies are used to
bring it to a head, I think I can get a strike in Goldkist which used to
be the Farmer's Exchange in Durham. I got a little kook left, you know,
the old Progressive Labor Party, that doesn't have any use for unions.
They don't say they don't have, but every move is devised to divide and
disrupt and destroy unions. Nothing you can do is going to satisfy them.
If we get double gas for
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We never had much problem with our own people.
How much is the thing in the Goldkist situation? Do the PL people accuse you of not bringing along local leadership, so that they can participate in the bargaining?
No, they attacked our local leadership. They attacked Laura Green, who is the chief steward in the plant. They haven't been doing much of that lately, because it hasn't been doing them much good. They attacked Pete Leake. Pete is a black, he came out of Watson's. They attacked him as incompetent, no matter what he does, he can't please them. Now, I'm not saying he's perfect. He'se got his weaknesses. But, basically, he's energetic, and a pretty honest guy. They attacked him simply because they've got to attack somebody and they found it wouldn't pay them to attack the international, it didn't pay them to attack Laura Green. They're always attacking somebody.
As you're getting older and more experienced, you
Oh, no. In fact, I didn't get into the first negotiations, the people in
the committee did it. I wasn't in Fairmont in the beginning. I only come
in when it looks like they're locking up and it needs a little help. You
see, negoitations are not a simple question of we make a proposal and we
retreat a little bit, and they retreat a little bit from their position.
It's not that, that's bullshit. First of all, the most important is the
relationship of forces involved. Second of all, you've got to know the
conditions in the industry. Then you've got to know what your people are
thinking about, what's the goal. You've got to know the national
picture, you've got to know a whole god damned thing. That's the things
you've got to know and understand. Then you've got also to have
something that maybe I can't put over to you what I mean. You've got to
know when a company has got weaknesses here and there. When they're weak
on an issue, when they're not weak on an issue. Something that they'll
take a strike over and something that they won't. You've got to know
when you can afford to take a strike and when not to. If you take a
strike, what does it mean? Does it have an impact on the industry? Or is
it just plain bullshit? Because it doesn't make sense to have a strike
just to prove that you're tough. You have to strike to make a point, you
may have a strike just to teach the industry something. Sometimes being
tough
How do you teach people all those things that you said. How do they know those things?
It's not easy, believe me. Part of it a development you only get through experience. I teach Jim what I taught Tony the same thing I taught Manny. I put them out there and make them do the job. If they want help, they talk to me.
Do you bring women along to teach them too?
My god, some of our best negotiators are women …
Who is that? In North Carolina?
Yes Elsie Hale is going to be a terrific negotiator, better than Jim, by
a lot. She works with Jim on these things. I'd say that we've got some
local people who are excellent chief stewards who can do a fine job in
negotiating. It's a question of experience plus adaptability and
understanding what's going on. How do you put it together? I don't know.
I know one thing. If you always move in and run the whole show. I let
them go until I know they need help. Until the committee says they want
help. They learn. The only way I know how a worker can learn how to deal
with a boss is to deal with him, to negotiate with him, to argue with
him,
They're still in shops …
Because we carried on a broad, progressive approach to developing leadership. We didn't exclude anyone, men, women, black, white, we don't care. Young, old, all we ask them is that they are dedicated to doing something for the people around them, and honest sincere dedication.
How many business agents do you have in North Carolina now?
Right now we have five full-time business agents and organizers, besides Manny and I.
Is Elsie one of those?
Elsie's one.
So it's the four men and Elsie?
That's right. We got two black and two white full-time guys, we've got
Ruddy Downing, we've got Tony. Tony's coming on as a real, able guy,
that's Tony Muncus. They're all able people, they've all got abilities.
I know their weaknesses. But I tell you, compared with what I watch in
other business agents in the state, other reps, they're
They have a big job, they have to organize and service, right?
Right. That's the way we want a guy. We don't want a guy to do just one thing. I want him if he's possible, to be the kind of a guy who can organize, who can service, who can negotiate, who can develop, theoretically, the program of the union. This is important, somebody's got to do it.
Let me ask you some more. Over this period of time, now, still from fifty-five to the present, the Henderson strike was one big political event in the state that affected trade unions. Were there some other things, you keep talking about progressive trade unionism. The way what you are trying to build can affect things, like the civil rights movement in a town, or the Speaker Ban Law, or voter registration …
Probably the next biggest impact that was tremendous, that's going to
influence the South most is the civil rights movement. This brought into
play the tremendous power of blacks when they're organized. They see it
translated into plants. Take Lundy's for instance. Lundy's back in 1958,
fifty-nine, we had an election there and what had happened, we organized
that, had about eighty-five percent signed up, but the international
told me, don't go to an election. We can shut him off in New York, we
have him by the balls. They had him, at the time, had him right where it
hurt. We waited, we waited better than a year, a year and two or three
months, and then we shut them off. And then came Landrum-Griffin in
We had merchants visiting. They used to come along on the street and pass
Manny, they searched Manny's car, and Millard Barbee's1 car. They used to search everybody's car two or
three times a week if you were around that area. They would pick up
workers who were going to work, walking down the street, blacks,
Indians, whatever they were, whites, pick them up, the cops would, and
take them in and say, now look, god damn it, you're drunk. I'm going to
tell you right now, the next time you get drunk if you're with that
union, you're in trouble. This is a
Could you prove agency in a thing …
Maybe, maybe we could have. But by the time we went up there, we thought
had it locked up. I never thought that, but we were told not to go in,
not to go for NLRB, it would shut them off. In those days we had Max
Block in New York with tremendous power, and we probably could have done
it. But anyway, we didn't go, but today it's a different story. Today, I
tell you the respect is absolutely fantastic. From the police they came
out they've got a town ordinance saying the only reason we didn't
challenge the town ordinance against picketing was because they gave us
twelve workers and
With
Is that what you mean by political, progressive trade unions, trade unionism …
Of course. That was part of it. Knowing that you had to have a union that was progressive on the racial issue, about political issues, on all the issues. Ours is, and we had a proper approach, at least I think we did, and the best proof is not the staff we got, but the unity we have with practically all elements except kookies who we can't control. They take a position, if you're a unionist, you must be already co-opted by the bosses, which doesn't do them no good. That was probably the next most important fact …
How do you think that's going to influence the place of trade unions?
My own opinion is that it may make the difference between organizing
textiles eventually, or not. You put them to a textile plant of six
hundred people, two hundred fifty, three hundred blacks, they'll move
that textile plant before they're done, and that's terribly important.
They put backbone into the whites, they put backbone into the other
minorities, and they take the guts out of the communities they're living
in
What else, there were several electoral campaigns that you probably thought. The Kennedy election in 1960? Did you work in that?
Yes I did, of course. Everybody worked in that. First of all, I'm not a great Kennedy lover. I've never been mesmerized by the Kennedys. I looked at them as guys who had millions of dollars who recognized they had to keep the system patched up to make it viable. They were, you have to divide the Kennedys too. I saw Bobby Kennedy as a much better guy than anybody else, beyond any argument, a much better guy. A decent guy, who had almost instinctive feelings about human beings and about… John Kennedy was a big faker and a fraud. I don't know too much about Teddy. I think the role he plays, you have to give some recognition to and utilize what you can out of the deal. He screwed himself in Chappaquiddick, I don't see…
But in terms of talking about trade unions being political…
No, I never saw this …
That wasn't the …
Let me tell you frankly, I considered Johnson a much better guy on many
things. Like around civil rights. I consider that he was better even on
trade unions than the Kennedys, except the guy, the god damned bastard
ran away evertime we had a fight around 14(b), but I think that was the
So you really think the open shop has been a critical deterrent in North Carolina.
Fantastic.
You say you had contact in seventy-one with five thousand, you had four thousand members. That's eighty percent, that's not bad.
But we're an exceptional union, we put more money into servicing than
practically any other union would ever think about in this state. We
spent the money on these people to keep the union strong enough to do a
job for them. But I know unions they don't take care of grievances, they
don't on negotiations, all they want to know is, have you got
membership. I don 't want to get into naming, a lot of them I have to
live with, I have to work with. I have to make compromises many times
with them on political arrangements in
What about McGovern. Did you think about him any different than the Kennedys? Any other possibilities in electoral politics, would you …
The guy was basically an honest guy. Maybe he has all kinds of weaknesses. Organizationally, he wasn't the smartest guy in the world. Maybe from the point of view of strategy and tactics, he wasn't the best, but you know, I can fault the guy for a lot off things, after all, nobody has got a monopoly on wisdom in developing strategy and tactics or anything else along this line. If he's got an honest approach, if he's a decent person, and I think he was, I think he did something that won't be recognized for fifteen, maybe twenty years, he opened up the Democrat party, the whole electoral process to blacks, to women, to many other elements. At least, nobody is going to take them for granted the way that they used to, and I think this is a tremendous thing he did for the …
Under his commission, as much as actually running for President …
That's right, that's what I'm talking about. I don't even give a damn if
he retreats now. It don't make any difference. What he did, he had an
effect. Today, you see guys like Jesse Jackson and many others who are
tremendous
Do you think that labor in terms of being political trade unionists currently? Do you think building an interest in electoral politics is important. building a separate party or working within one of the two parties?
Let me just say how I feel about it. I guess I'm just like anybody else,
I get so god damned disgusted with the pragmatic approach to politics
that I get sick of it. For instance, you see what's happening in
Congress right now, waltzing around on the energy issue. Each one, they
try to blame the President, and he tries to blame them. It's all getting
ready for seventy-six, and it doesn't seem they care about what happens
to people in between, providing they are in a good position in
seventy-six. Some of it may be important, that they expose Ford, I think
he's a fraud, I think he's a continuation of Nixon in a much more
gentle, subtler form. But it's the same god damned politics of aiding
the rich and the rich are getting richer, and the poor are to get
poorer, you see. That to me is how I make my decision. Here is the way I
feel about electoral politics, the common approach to elections and
electoral politics, you had to do it. You got to do it for some reasons.
First of all, there can be some practical advantage that's made by labor
and by the people. More, important, how can you get people to look
inside of a system and see how corrupt and rotten it is unless they take
part?
They have got to see that alternatives based upon their recognition and experience of the failure of the system they live under.
You said earlier, before we started taping, that you didn't use to have a bank account. A nicer house?
I guess everyone wants a few bucks, I guess.
You said that when you were younger, you thought that was bourgeois?
Indeed.
And then when you got older, you realized that quote, they didn't take care of you when you got old.
It didn't make any difference whether it was bourgeois or not, that's the system I'm living under right now, and I don't think anyone else will take care of John Russell, I'm not talking right now if a banker takes care of a banker, or certain trade unionists take care of other trade unionists, I'm talking now if me and my wife don't take a few bucks out of our income, and put it aside, we're looking for trouble in our old age. I think you got to recognize the system, you got to live inside of it, but you also got to fight to change it, and dissolve the god damned thing.
What do you think from fifty-five until now, as you watch people participate in experience in electoral politics and trade union politics, what's the difference in their view of things? Your membership.
Membership, I can tell you basically the same or much different. I think
we have a much more enlightened membership. Sometimes they just make you
wonder. Than most unions, because we put out educational stuff, we have
institutes. All of this has some impact, otherwise what's the
I just wondered, you've been at this work a long time now.
Have I seen changes in their attitude? Yes, I have. For instance, when the Vietnam War started, we had a lot of people on our executive board who took the same position that Johnson did and many others. But they changed. They changed much more rapidly than we saw anybody else in the state changed, because we were against him on the issue. There was never any hesitation on our part to denounce the Vietnam War right from the beginning. We talked about it. We took issue with Meany. When George supported it, we said, George speaks for himself, he doesnt speak for us. Our people listened, they began to see, to put together the tremendous costs of the war. Somebody has to point up the issues and problems. So they began to see it. I think our union was the first in the state to take a position on the war, if you remember, Bill.
That's right.
So, you see, we have impact on other people. They accepted it, they
followed it. Today, they follow our leadership in many ways, simply
because in other ways, we're right. This happens with unions. How do you
convince people,
What about changes in the standard of living, material things. People aren't as willing now to take risks as much now because of what, the job security …
That happens all the time, you couldn't change that. Even when you develop a much more progressive and positive thinking on the part of the membership there's no doubt when there is a time like this when there is layoffs, recession, tremendous unemployment, everybody has certain fears. They're not going to be so god damned hot to trot to strike, because it don't happen that way.
You have two periods in history when people are hot to trot, when they
think things are good, when the money is there, and they feel the
pressures of
When things are real bad …
Real bad, and they're organized and intelligent enough to say, god damn it, let's change the whole deal. Why patch up when we can cure, and finish it. That's what I'm saying. These are the times. In periods like this, because no matter how much we like it Bill, we may not want to admit it, but the American working class with the exception of eight to ten million unemployed, is living very good. Take a look and see. You've got two people have jobs, three people have jobs in the same family, some of them have two jobs. So there is a depression for eight million people.
The unemployed.
The unemployed. But the great rank-and-file. It's interesting how much they like to lump in as middle class, which is bullshit, because they're not middle class. They're trying to get the idea, you're the middle class, you're making the money. The depression doesn't touch you, listen to our conservative policies. The truth of the matter is …
The working class is living very good …
Still living pretty god damned good and don't
What do you think that does to your own membership's self-consciousness? Do they think they got it good?
Let me tell you something, some of them do. Some, in fact, what are you talking about? By the end of next year, our J.B.s are making $251 a week.
J.B.s?
Journeymen butchers. You know what that means? We talking about $12,000 or $13,000 a year. A head meatcutter who makes $15,000 or $16,000 a year. You're talking about a possibility that they know about already, that we may move them into as much as a $300 a week class. You tell me, their insurance is paid, their pension is paid, they get nine or ten paid holidays a year …
Not at Goldkist, though …
Up to five. I agree. Even they, it's a relative thing. Let me show you what Laura says. Laura's a killer, of course she makes more money, but some on the committee, some of them are not killers. But on base pay, when we organized Goldkist, they were getting seventy-five cents or maybe a dollar an hour, minimum. They got that and sometimes maybe a nickel more or ten cents more.
This was '60 …
'64, or '65. Now, you see, they're making two seventy-five, they've
already had an offer right now of twenty-five cents an hour, they'll
What kind of time do you think this is in the country? You're talking about …
There's no question, we're facing a crisis. Inflationwise,
unemploymentwise. At the same time, I tell you that there was
tremendous, why do you think Ford is being accepted now, Ford is being
accepted because to a lot of people, he represents stability. He's a guy
who won't rock the boat. This kind of business is exactly what kind of
thing workers accept from that point of view. And this is a great danger
for any Democratic aspirants in 1976. I don't say they can't overcome
it, because I know the god damned guy hasn't got anything on the ball,
and you know he hasn't got anything on the ball, and most of our people
know it. But as long as he satisfies that big section of people who
feel, we're not threatened right now. He's going
What I'm trying to get at is what is the value of trade unions. When you stared, the value of Fur and Leather when you started, seems clearer to me than the value of them now. What do you think of the differences, as an institution?
It was a different story back in those days. The immediate aims and aspirations of working people were much clearer and much more urgent back in those days. You had to eat, you had to have jobs. There were practically no unions back in the early thirties. They fought to build unions. Now the unions become accepted by great elements among the working class as facts of life. And one of the facts of life accepted by them is that unions have corrupt and bureaucratic leadership. That don't change my opinion of the need for unions or the value of unions. We went through a period of well-being that was paid for by the sufferings and miseries of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. We were the bankers, we were the armament makers, we were the ones who got rich off everybody's raw resources. We lived through a period that is almost ready to go now.
What period are you talking about? The war?
We lived in a period after World War Two where the world was our oyster,
and we were able to open it up anytime we wanted to. But this is
different now. It's
It's true that the people who are organized is less and less of the workforce. And the numer of unemployed is more and more, and as the fewer percentage of those who are employed who are organized, right?
No argument.
So that means the big unions can broker when this crunch comes. So it is those who aren't organized and those who are unemployed. Do you still think trade unions are the kind of approach to take to people?
Let's take a look and see …
From your own experience, too …
Let …
And in the South.
Let me just point out something on a national basis. In the thirties, the
great movement was for the great mass production indistries to organize,
right?
Well it's true, AFSCME's getting much larger. But the percentage is still getting smaller.
It doesn't matter. What I am saying is that today those who are in service industries, you name it, hospital, medical, doctors, policeman, all these are organizing. They're not mass production workers any longer. That great section is organizing simply because they got the screwing for many, many years, and they ain't going to take it any longer. As they push up their wages and their conditions, and the ecomomy adjusts to that, it will adjust one way or another, this history. The brunt of poor wages, of practically poverty wages and poor conditions are probably going to fall on some other group. What's that other group? Other groups have to be white collare workers, office workers, people who haven't had some organization, who really consider themselves the middle class. They're going to organize, they're going to be forced to do so. They're going to be like the building trades that were organized for many years, the mass production, the service, the public sector, you see. They are all going to, just like the ballplayers, just like the doctors and the lawyers, like anybody else, there has to be an organization to represent you. So I see trade unions as growing bigger and bigger, becoming a more important part of the nation. You say to me, what's bigger, it's just corrupt. But that will come to an end. In my opinion it will come to an end. How will it come to an end? A revolutionary end, no other way.
What does that mean?
That means you have to get rid of the god damned type of guy you have in Meany, whether it's Kirkland …
Sadlowski in the Steelworkers, is that revolutionary?
Abel, the whole group. I don't know Sadlowski, I know of his name. Inside the Steelworkers Union, struggles take place now. Not tremendous changes, but struggles for power. But these represent and are caused by conditions down below, and ferment down below. The fact that they change one bastard for another may not change much, but the fact that they're able to do it leads to things beyond just making a change again. It's going to happen, you'll see. It's going …
Maybe the fact that you had to take care of yourself, living in this kind of house, doesn't depress you in the sense that society …
I'm going to retire in a few more years. I'm going to have a place where
I can work in that garden and live. All I want is a place to live.
You still think that more and more people want to organize?
Oh yah, I …
No question about it?
No question. I tell you, as certain elements
What is they key sector of the economy in the South?
It's been textiles.
It's true that right now that many other sectors of the private industry,
electrical, glass, many others, are moving into sections of the South.
It's almost like putting an anchor out to windward, that's what many of
them are doing. They build a plant in the South. Many
Do you think the people you've worked with, especially in the Meatcutters, especially in the poultry industry, you really see them as right off the farm?
That's been one of our problems with them. We've got plants with thirty, forty percent turnover every year, simply because people go back when the planting season comes in. What are you going to say? If they're not close to the farms, I don't know anybody who is. They'll quit their jobs and go back.
Are they interested in trade unions?
Many of them are. A lot of them sign up in the union. Some get out when the pressure gets on. They have a habit of waiving right before that escape period when the contract expires. You have an escape period under the law for the checkoff, and they get out then. But they become less and less in most places. Right now we lost five hundred people in Watson, four hundred in Morton, a hundred and fifty in Southeastern, about another hundred and seventy in Cross, and I don't know how many more from A&P, maybe six hundred. But we're only down about six or seven hundred from our 3800 high of a few years ago.
You've got about 3200 now?
About 3200. We've consolidated, that's an important aspect of trade unionism.
What's consolidation mean?
Making sure that if you've got a plant of two hundred people, that they're all in the union, or as near as you can get. It takes a lot of work, but we worked. We educated, and we worked at the problem. The point I'm trying to make is that despite the tremendous loss, an overall loss in plants, we're not down that much. I think that no matter how backward a worker is, how recently he left the farm, with proper leadership, you can guide him in the right channels. Sooner or later if he gets out this year, he won't get out quite as quickly next year if you sign him back up again. The time comes when what the hell is ten, twelve dollars a month, eight bucks …
What are dues now?
They run, it depends, we got them on a percentage basis now, we just passed that.
Is it like eight to twelve?
I don't think we got anybody at twelve dollars. It's from eight up to ten, ten fifty. Since it's on percentage it will go up. The seventy cents, sixty cents, whatever we get out of Goldkist will mean these people will be paying another buck, buck and a half dues, in that neighborhood.
Let me ask you one more quick question. Do you think the labor laws, the way NLRB works now, and the influence it exercises over campaigns, it's gotten so unwieldy and so large that it is a hindrance to organizing rather than a protection?
There's no question that the NLRB has adopted policies and programs that
greatly diminish the ability of labor to organize. Not only in 1947, but
all down the years it has been a continuing thing. From a real concept
of right to work and organize, it's been a diminishing thing for so
END OF INTERVIEW