Gloria Ferris

My next scheduled installment in the Put It On The Ballot series was to be about the concept of leadership and how it has become rather perverse here in Northeast Ohio but then over on Brewed Fresh Daily George posted a letter that Roldo received and the comments it has generated made me think that the time was right for this post.

During the Put It On The Ballot campaign you may or may not know that many of the venues where we circulated the petitions a member of some union would pass out slick printed literature touting the benefits to Cleveland of the Medical Mart and how we needed the Convention Center as well for jobs-union jobs.  It amazed me that these union members could not see that a “right to vote” for those jobs for bricks and mortar was something that we should not be willing to give over to three county commissioners who had never really made a case for how this money poured into the general fund would be earmarked for this project.  Unions have come a long way but somewhere they have wandered off the path that their founders envisioned.   

My dad was a union guy- a stalwart union guy.  He wasn’t, at first, but when he came back from the war he went to work with his dad in a foundry in Wooster. It wasn’t a union shop, but some of the older guys wanted to make it so.  Dad was on the fence, and then. a big piece of machinery swung the wrong way and it broke his nose.  I think Mom said they sent a ham and a fruit basket and told him to “get well soon.” When he went back to work, he was bounced back to the first job he had ever had at the foundry-patternmaker.  He made much less money.  Then, he worked his way back up to the job that broke his nose. Wouldn’t you know the damn machine swung the wrong way one more time and broke his nose one more time. This time he was told by management that he was “accident-prone” and that he needed to be more careful.  Dad said the machinery was faulty and he was suspended for a week.  Needless to say, my dad signed on with the union organizers and, within a year, the shop was unionized.  My mother’s family and much of my father’s family was very chagrined that my mother and he had become a “union” family.  Democrats, no less.  I grew up in the heart of a Republican county.

Many years later, when I was in college I finally landed the coveted summer job wanted by all college students in my hometown–the job at Rubbermaid.  All I could see were the big bucks in my future.  I was going to make enough to pay for school and have a great summer besides with at least two trips to Virginia Beach.  Three weeks into that job, we were called in for a special meeting by the management.  The United Rubber Workers had threatened a strike and they were asking us college kids to sign on to work throughout the summer to keep the factory running.  I don’t remember the details but we would be making more money than we were at that point.  The only thing we needed to do was to sign up,  to agree to be carted in by bus, and to realize that we might be asked to stay in the factory.  Later,  I was telling my mom all the details when my dad came home from work.  He had left the foundry years before and now belonged to the Laborer’s Union in the construction trades.  He no longer felt the need to be on the front lines of the union giving up his days as union steward and organizer, but he still believed strongly in “The Union Way” as he called it.  He asked what was the reason for such serious faces. When I told him,  I never expected his reaction.  My mom was the disciplinarian in our family so very seldom had I ever seen my father the least bit upset with me.  In fact, he was my pal. my buddy, the guy that knew what it was like to be a kid. I swear his blue eyes threw sparks at me and his deeply tanned face became a mottled red. Profanity spewed out of his mouth as he told me that no @&#@ daughter of his was going to be a @%&$@ scab. WOW! Was I floored.

Many hours later when I felt it was safe to approach him, I asked him “What’s the big deal? I will be able to pay for my year at college.  I’ll have some extra money. I won’t have to work the cafeteria job unless I want to do it. ” He then told me that “I” ”I” “I” was not the point in the discussion the point was that Union brothers and sisters felt the need to strike and that all unions and union families needed to support them.  It is in the numbers where unions make it better for the common good.  When unions gain benefits and safe working conditions all workers benefit-unionized or not.  If they can split us back into factions and have us thinking only of ourselves, we will lose. It turned out that summer that the Teamsters Union backed the URW and said that they would not cross the picket lines.  If Rubbermaid couldn’t move the goods they were producing, it would hurt the bottom line.  Everyone went back to the table and the strike was averted.

I think my dad was right, but I think what he talked about standing united and working together  is even more necessary today and much more farreaching and relevant than it was when we had that conversation in the early 70’s. Unions are a big part of the reason for our quality of life here in America, but I think that many unions have been overtaken by college graduates that are closer to corporate types than they are to the ordinary people who organized and made those unions great.  Somewhere along the way, they have lost their way.

When a newspaper can obscure a grassroots effort from being what it was-putting it on the ballot and giving the public the right to vote and make it about the Medical Mart/Convention Center which it never was because such an issue would have HAD to be put on the ballot and in front of the voters, we are losing.  We are losing something very basic to democracy.  We are losing because we are being split into factions  constantly. As long as we allow ourselves to be pitted one community against another we will not move forward and we will not prosper.  I was amazed that union members would not think of their brothers and sisters who would be paying increased taxes it was only about the promise of a job. Not the reality of a job, but the promise of a job.  That these union members would not know or did not care that a sales tax is one of the most regressive taxes known and that those least able to afford it would be paying the most is troubling.

Unions have come a long way since the beginning but maybe they need to go back to their roots to begin the transformation that so many people feel they need.  I believe this quote from the letter to the NY Times by the former UAW Regional Directors speaks directly to this issue “Our role as a union, in behalf of our members and the community at large, is not to help them escape their responsibility to their past commitments but to help them convert those commitments to the common good.”  There is a lot of discussion about what is the common good and who or what decides that definition, but I think that that is just an intellectual cop out.  To me,  these words of Hubert Humphrey exemplify”common good” -It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped. I believe that the noun government in this quote can be changed to many other words-society, individual, union member,  business leader, county commissioner and the list could continue. Place your own noun there, and see if it works for you.  How do we stack up here in NEO?

 These words demand action not intellectual conversation.  And it is imperative that Unions look back along the path they came when transforming themselves now so that they remain a part of our future because their role should be oh so much more than it has become.   

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Cleveland, Put It On The Ballot, developing community, growing an economy, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.