A co-worker of mine who was very active in the Union with me used to call it “where the rubber meets the road” and there is no better expression than this.
I am retired now but I miss very much the struggles on the job and the Union activity that helped me win those struggles on occasion, but most importantly, that allowed me to participate in them at all for as individuals, our social power is very limited. I was talking with a fellow retiree the other day and we talked about this. When I first decided to get active in the Union I ran for assistant steward. I figured I was pretty smart and, not only that, I had an English accent and that was usually a plus in these United States.
The steward in my corporation yard was an older guy, a black dude who was some talker and he smoked Winston’s like they were going out of style. His name was Al. I can say that now, I guess, as he’s dead. But Al was a bit of a hustler. He was a fast talker, and he wasn’t one of those characters that allowed the up and coming young white boys to push him around. I don’t mean physically, Al was of slight build, but intellectually, he was a sharp one alright. He was active in the Union and some of his critics spread rumors about him going to an international convention and buying fancy luggage for the trip on the Union’s tab and stuff like that. Al was a sneaky bugger at times, but he was my sneaky bugger.
The day came when, as assistant steward, an issue came up that I would have to deal with and Al decided that it would be a good for me to take the lead. I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was simple enough for Al to let me do the talking.
I was feeling very confident. I had checked all the details of the case and figured I had the right argument and morality and right on my side. “All I have to do”, I said to my self, “ is clearly present the facts of the case and the boss will see where they went wrong.” In other words, I felt that all I had to do was win the argument.
All I remember 25 years later is that I was about 30 seconds in to my presentation when Al calls a caucus. I didn’t know what a caucus was but it meant that Al and I would go out side and talk.
“No problem” I say to Al.
We get in to the hallway and Al just lets me have it, “What the f*%ck are you doing?” he says, ”keep your motherf*;%*ng mouth shut.” He yells at me.
“What do you mean, Al?” say I completely stunned by Al’s concern.
“You’re talking too much” he says, “You are telling him to much about this issue. You are blabbering on about what happened. You’re revealing too much.”
“It’ ain’t about morality or who has the right answers” he added, “It’s about power, that’s what right is about, power.”
As a working class person I sort of new that but got caught up in the atmosphere of civility that surrounds official procedures. For every right we have written on a piece of paper there has to be a social force backing it up. The bosses don’t care about written rights it’s the power behind them that holds them back. All the social legislation that came out of the 1930’s were a response to what was already taken in the streets and the factories of America. The ruling class was simply accepting in writing rights that had already been won in the streets and workplaces. Their efforts now were concentrated on codifying those rights, weakening them and the movement of the time, taking it in to the established social structures and controlling it. The same with the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s.
I remember some time before Al died we had an arbitration case come up. Two of our co-workers, a truck driver and a backhoe operator, were reported by a member of the public for sleeping in their parked vehicles. The bosses disciplined them. The Union grieved it and took it as far as we could internally. The decision to go to arbitration was taken at membership meetings after a recommendation by the lawyer. In this case the attorney said we shouldn’t spend the money as he didn’t think it was winnable.
Al rose and with an air of confidence argued against this and said that he would do the arbitration and believed we had a good case. I could see the looks on some of the young guys faces, and some of Al’s peers, the older black brothers and sisters who were some of the founders of my Local were skeptical too, Al had a sharp tongue and after all, how can Al be smarter than a lawyer in these affairs?
But out of respect for Al and his years we voted to take the grievance to arbitration and have Al do it despite the lawyer’s recommendation. Well, Al won that arbitration. I remember him coming to my house in East Oakland the day he received the arbitrator’s decision in favor. I was sort of honored because I know that Al had fought discrimination all his life. When you are a ditch digger primarily, no matter what color or race you are its hard to not be affected by the view that you can’t be too smart otherwise you wouldn’t be standing in mud all day long. This is class oppression we all have to deal with, but being black in the US or any ethnic, religious or gender minority as well, is an extra form of oppression that these workers deal with every day.
As we sat on my porch drinking a beer, Al went through the Arbitration and explained how he won it. He was helping me to learn a thing or two about this process. I have the opinion that as a young white worker who was from another country, not an American, there was less of a racial barrier separating us that we normally have to overcome. The fact that I lived where I did didn’t hurt but I think for someone like Al, it was harder to approach a home grown white worker due to the history of racism here which lends me to consider that it is not so much the color of the skin that is the obstacle but the social role that white workers have, or have not played. The leadership of the working class is to blame for much of the negative aspects of that but that’s another story.
Al was in his 28th year of employment and was still not a foreman. Like all the older black guys he had trained many of his own supervisors who were overwhelmingly white. But this time him and I were on the Foreman’s list, (Foreperson now). I remember a supervisor calling me up and offering me the job. He was a right wing, very sheltered individual who had pretty much worked there straight out of high school, not known many other jobs. He loved Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, bigots and anti-worker characters like that. I can’t remember who was ahead of who on the list but I told the boss no thanks, Al has been here 28 years and knows more than me, he deserves that job more than I do.
Al got that job and I actually worked for him for a while. He was not what that boss wanted because he was smart, pro Union and an independent thinker. He had fought more battles in his lifetime than that supervisor could ever dream of fighting.
Working class history is full of people like Al, who are not perfect but never let the bosses or the system take the humanity and guts from them.
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